Pastwatch: The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus

Chapter 10 -- Arrivals

Did the Lord say that Cristoforo would be the first to see the new land? If he did, then the prophecy must be fulfilled. But if he did not, then Cristoforo could allow Rodrigo de Triana to claim credit for seeing land first. Why couldn't Cristoforo remember the exact words the Lord said? The most important moment in his life until now, and the wording escaped him completely.

No mistaking it, though. In the moonlight seeping through the clouds everyone could see the land; sharp-eyed Rodrigo de Triana had first seen it an hour ago, at two in the morning, when it was nothing but a different-colored shadow on the western horizon. The other sailors were gathered around him now, offering their congratulations and cheerfully reminding him of his debts, both real and imaginary. As well they should, for the first to see land had been promised a reward of ten thousand maravedis a year for life. It was enough to keep a fine household with servants; it would make de Triana a gentleman.

But what was it, then, that Cristoforo had seen earlier tonight, at ten o'clock? Land must have been close then, too, scarcely four hours before de Triana saw it. Cristoforo had seen a light, moving up and down, as if signaling him, as if beckoning him onward. God had shown land to him, and if he was to fulfill the words of the Lord, he must lay the claim.

"I'm sorry, Rodrigo," called Cristoforo from his place near the helm. "But the land you see now is surely the same land I saw at ten o'clock."

A hush fell over the company.

"Don Pedro Gutierrez came to my side when I called him," said Cristoforo. "Don Pedro, what did we both see?"

"A light," said Don Pedro. "In the west, where the land now lies." He was the King's majordomo -- or, to put it bluntly, the King's spy. Everyone knew he was no particular friend to Colўn. Yet to the common sailors, all gentlemen were conspirators against them, as it certainly seemed to them now.

"I was the one cried 'land' before anyone," said de Triana. "You gave no sign of it, Don Cristobal."

"I admit that I doubted it," said Cristoforo. "The sea was rough, and I doubted that land could be so near. I convinced myself that it could not be land, and so I said nothing because I didn't want to raise false hopes. But Don Pedro is my witness that I did see it, and what we all see now bears out the truth of it."

De Triana was outraged at what seemed to him to be plain theft. "All those hours I strained my eyes looking west. A light in the sky isn't land. No one saw land before I did, no one!"

Sdnchez, the royal inspector -- the King's official representative and bookkeeper on the voyage -- immediately spoke up, his voice whipping sharply across the deck. "Enough of this. On the King's voyage, does anyone dare to question the word of the King's admiral?"

It was a daring thing for him to say, for only if Cristoforo reached Cipangu and returned to Spain would the title Admiral of the Ocean-Sea belong to him. And Cristoforo well knew that last night, when Don Pedro had affirmed that he saw the same light, Sdnchez had insisted that there was no light, that there was nothing in the west. If anyone was going to cast doubt on Cristoforo's claim to first sighting, it would be Sanchez. Yet he had supported, if not Cristoforo's testimony, then his authority.

That would do well enough.

"Rodrigo, your eyes are indeed sharp, " said Cristoforo. "If someone on shore had not been casting a light -- a torch, or a bonfire -- I would have seen nothing. But God led my eyes to the shore by that light, and you merely confirmed what God had already shown me."

The men were silent, but Cristoforo knew that they were not content. A moment ago they had been rejoicing in the sudden enrichment of one of their own; as usual, they had seen the reward snatched out of the hands of the common man. They would assume, of course, that Cristoforo and Don Pedro lied, that they acted from greed. They could not understand that he was on God's mission, and that he knew God would give him plenty of wealth without his having to take it from a common sailor. But Cristoforo dared not fail but to fulfill the Lord's instructions in every particular. If God had ordained that he be first to lay eyes upon the far-off kingdoms of the Orient, then Cristoforo could not thwart God's will in this, not even out of sympathy for de Triana. Nor could he even share some portion of the reward with Triana, for word would get out and people would assume that it was, not Cristoforo's mercy and compassion, but rather his guilty conscience that made him give the money. His claim to have seen land must stand unassailed forever, lest the will of God be undone. As for Rodrigo de Triana, God would surely provide him with decent compensation for his loss.

It would have been nice if, now that all the struggle was near fruition, God had let something be simple.

No measurements are exact. The temporal field was supposed to form a perfect sphere that exactly scoured the inside of the hemisphere, sending the passenger and his supplies back in time while leaving the metal bowl behind in the future. Instead, Hunahpu found himself rocking gently in a portion of the bowl, a fragment of metal so thin that he could see leaves through the edges of it. For a moment he wondered how he would get out, for metal so thin would surely have an edge that would slice right through his skin. But then the metal shattered under the strain and fell in thin crumbling sheets on the ground. His supplies tumbled down among the fragile shards.

Hunahpu got up and walked gingerly, gathering up the thin sheets carefully and making a pile of them near the base of a tree. Their biggest fear, in delivering him on land, was that the sphere of his temporal field would bisect a tree, causing the top half of it to drop like a battering ram onto Hunahpu and his supplies. So they had put him as near the beach as they dared without running a serious risk of dropping him in the ocean. But the measurements were not exact. One large tree was not three meters from the edge of the field.

No matter. He had missed the tree. The slight miscalculation in the size of the field had at least been in the direction of including too much rather than slicing off a portion of his equipment. And with luck they would have come close enough to the right timeframe that he would be in good time to accomplish his work before the Europeans came.

It was early morning, and Hunahpu's greatest danger would come from being sighted too soon. This stretch of beach had been chosen because it was rarely visited; only if they had missed their target date by several weeks would someone be within sight of him. But he had to act as if the worst had happened. He had to be careful.

Soon he had everything out of sight among the bushes. He sprayed himself again with insect repellent, just to be sure, and began the labor of carrying everything from the shore to the hiding place he had selected among the rocks a kilometer inland.

It took him most of the day. He rested then, and allowed himself the luxury of pondering his future. I am here in the land of my ancestors, or at least a place near to it. There is no retreat. If I don't bring it off, I'll end up as a sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli or perhaps some Zapotecan god. Even if Diko and Kemal made it, their target dates were years in the future from this place where I am now. I am alone in this world, and everything depends on me. Even if the others fail, I have it in my power to undo Columbus. All I have to do is turn the Zapotecs into a great nation, link up with the Tarascans, accelerate the development of ironworking and shipbuilding, block the Tlaxcalans and overthrow the Mexica, and prepare these people for a new ideology that does not include human sacrifice. Who couldn't do that?

It had looked so easy on paper. So logical, such a simple progression from one step to the next. But now, knowing no one in this place, all alone with the most pathetic of equipment, really, which could not be replaced or repaired if it failed ...

Enough of that, he told himself. I still have a few hours before dark. I must find out when I have arrived. I have rendezvous to keep.

Before dark he had located the nearest Zapotec village, Atetulka, and, because he had watched this village over and over again on the TruSite II, he recognized what day it was from what he saw the people doing. There had been no important error in the temporal field, so far as date was concerned. He had arrived when he was supposed to, and he had the option of making himself known to this village in the morning.

He winced at the thought of what he would have to do to make ready, and then walked back to his cache in the dusk. He waited for the jaguar that he had watched so many times, dropped it with a tranquilizer dart, then killed it and skinned it, so he could arrive at Atetulka wearing the skin. They would not lay hands readily upon a Jaguar Man, especially when he identified himself as a Maya king from the inscrutable underworld land of Xibalba. The days of Mayan greatness were long in the past, but they were well remembered all the same. The Zapotecs lived perpetually in the great shadow of the Maya civilization of centuries past. The Interveners had come to Columbus dressed up in the image of the God he believed in; Hunahpu would do the same. The difference was that he would have to live on with the people he was deceiving and continue to manipulate them successfully for the rest of his life.

This all had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Cristoforo wouldn't let any of the ships sail for land until full light. It was an unknown coast, and, impatient as they all were to set foot on solid earth again, there was no use in risking even one ship when there might be reefs or rocks.

The daylight passage proved him right. The approaches were treacherous, and it was only by deft sailing that Cristoforo was able to guide them in to shore. Let them say he was no sailor now, thought Cristoforo. Could Pinzўn himself have done better than I just did?

Yet none of the sailors seemed disposed to give him credit for his navigation. They were still sullen over the matter of de Triana's reward. Well, let them pout. There would be wealth enough for all before this voyage was done. Hadn't the Lord promised so much gold that a great fleet could not carry it all? Or was that what Cristoforo's memory had made up for the Lord to have said?

Why couldn't I have been permitted to write it down when it was fresh in mind! But Cristoforo had been forbidden, and so he had to trust his memory. There was gold here, and he would bring it home.

"At this latitude, we must surely be at the coast of Cipangu," said Cristoforo to Sanchez.

"Do you think so?" asked Sanchez. "I can't think of a stretch of the Spanish coast where there would be no sign of human habitation."

"You forget the light that we saw last night," said Don Pedro.

Sanchez said nothing.

"Have you ever seen such a lush and verdant land," said Don Pedro.

"God smiles on this place," said Cristoforo, "and he has delivered it into the hands of our Christian King and Queen."

The caravels were moving slowly, for fear of running aground in uncharted shallows. As they moved closer to the luminous white beach, figures emerged from the forest shadows.

"Men!" cried one of the sailors.

And so they obviously were, since they wore no clothing except for a string around their waists. They were dark, but not, Cristoforo thought, as dark as the Africans he had seen. And their hair was straight, not tight-curled.

"Such men as these," said Sanchez, "I have never seen before."

"That is because you have never been to the Indies before," said Cristoforo.

"Nor have I been to the moon," murmured Sanchez.

"Haven't you read Marco Polo? These are not Chinese because their eyes are not pinched-off and slanted. There is no yellowness to their skin, nor blackness either, but rather a ruddiness that tells us they are of India."

"So it's not Cipanga after all?" said Don Pedro.

"An outlying island. We have come perhaps too far north. Cipangu is to the south of here, or the southwest. We can't be sure how accurate Polo's observations were. He was no navigator."

"And you are?" asked Sanchez dryly.

Cristoforo did not even bother to look at him with the disdain that he deserved. "I said that we would reach the Orient by sailing west, Se¤or, and here we are."

"We're somewhere," said Sanchez. "But where this place may be on God's green Earth, no man can say."

"By God's own sacred wounds, man, I tell you that we are in the Orient."

"I admire the admiral's certainty."

There it was again, that title -- admiral. Sanchez's words seemed to express doubt, and yet he gave the title that could only be given to Cristoforo if his expedition succeeded. Or did he use the title ironically? Was Cristoforo being mocked?

The helmsman called to him. "Do we head for land now, sir?"

"The sea is still too rough," said Cristoforo. "And you can see the waves breaking over rocks. We have to circle the island and find an opening. Sail two points west of south until we round the southern end of the reef, and then west."

The same command was signaled to the other two caravels. The Indians on the shore waved at them, shouting something incomprehensible. Ignorant and naked -- it was not appropriate for the emissary of Christian kings to make his first overtures to the poorest people of this new land. Jesuit missionaries had traveled to the far corners of the East. Someone who knew Latin would surely be sent to greet them, now that they had been sighted.

About midday, now sailing northward up the western coast of the island, they found a bay that made a good entrance. By now it was clear that this was an island so small as to be insignificant. Even the Jesuits couldn't be bothered with a place so small, so Cristoforo was reconciled to waiting another day or two before reaching someone worthy of receiving the emissaries of the King and Queen.

The sky had cleared and the sun shone hot and bright as Cristoforo descended into the launch. Behind him down the ladder came Sanchez and Don Pedro and, shaky as ever, poor Rodrigo de Escobedo, the notary who had to make an official record of all deeds done in the name of Their Majesties. He had cut a fine figure at court, a promising young functionary, but on board ship he had quickly been reduced to a puking shadow rushing from his cabin to the gunwale and staggering back -- when he had strength to rise from his bed at all. By now, of course, he had got something like sea legs, and he even ate food that didn't end up staining the sides of the caravel. But yesterday's storms had felled him again, and so it was an act of sheer courage that he could come to shore and perform the duty for which he had been sent. Cristoforo admired him enough for his silent strength that he determined that no log of his would record the fact of Escobedo's seasickness. Let him keep his dignity in history.

Cristoforo noted that the launch put away from Pinzўn's caravel before all the royal officials had made it down into his launch. Let Pinzўn beware, if he thinks he can be the first to set foot on this island. Whatever he thinks of me as a sailor, I am still the emissary of the King of Aragon and the Queen of Castile, and it would be treason for him to try to preempt me on such a mission as this.

Pinzўn must have realized this halfway to the beach, for his launch lay still in the water as Cristoforo's passed him and ran up onto the beach. Before the boat staggered to a stop, Cristoforo swung over the side and tramped through the water, the low breakers soaking him up to the waist and dragging at the sword at his hip. He held the royal standard high over his head as he broke from the water and strode forward on the smooth wet sand of the beach. He walked on until he was above the tide line, and there in the dry sand he knelt down and kissed the earth. Then he rose to his feet and turned to see the others behind him, also kneeling, also kissing the ground as he had done.

"This small island will now bear the name of the holy Savior who led us here."

Escobedo wrote on the paper he held on the small box he had carried from the caravel: "San Salvador."

"This land is now the property of Their Majesties King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, our sovereigns and the servants of Christ."

They waited as Escobedo finished writing what Cristoforo had said. Then Cristoforo signed the deed, and so also did every other man there. None had the temerity to dare to sign above him, or to sign more than half as large as his bold signature.

Only then did the natives begin to emerge from the forest. There was a large number of them, all naked, none armed, brown as treebark. Against the vivid greens of the trees and underbrush, their skin looked almost red. They walked timidly, deferently, awe obvious on their faces.

"Are they all children?" asked Escobedo.

"Children?" asked Don Pedro.

"No beards," said Escobedo.

"Our captain shaves his face, too," said Don Pedro.

"They have no whiskers at all," said Escobedo.

Sanchez, hearing them, laughed loudly. "They're stark naked, and you look at their chins to see if they're men?"

Pinzўn overheard the joke and laughed even louder, passing the story on.

The natives, hearing the laughter, joined in. But they could not keep from reaching up and touching the beards of those Spaniards nearest them. It was so obvious that they had no harmful intent that the Spaniards permitted their touch, laughing and joking.

Still, even though Cristoforo had no beard to attract them, they obviously recognized that he was the leader, and it was to him that the oldest of them came. Cristoforo tried several languagaes on him, including Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Genovese, to no avail. Escobedo tried Greek and Pinzўn's brother, Vicente Yanez, tried the smattering of Moorish he had learned during his years of smuggling along the coast.

"They have no language at all," said Cristoforo. Then he reached out to the gold ornament the chief wore in his ear.

Without a word the man smiled, took it out of his ear, and laid it in Cristoforo's hand.

The Spaniards sighed in relief. So these natives understood things well enough, language or not. Whatever gold they had belonged to Spain.

"More of this," said Cristoforo. "Where do you dig it out of the ground?"

Met by incomprehension, Cristoforo acted it out, digging in the sand and "finding" the gold ornament there. Then he pointed inland.

The old man shook his head vigorously and pointed out to sea. To the southwest.

"The gold apparently doesn't come from this island," said Cristoforo. "But we could hardly expect a place as small and poor as this to have a gold mine, or there would have been royal officials from Cipangu here to oversee the labor of digging it."

He laid the gold ornament back into the old man's hand. To the other Spaniards he said, "We'll soon see gold in such quantities as to make this a trifle."

But the old man refused to keep the gold. He pressed it upon Cristoforo again. It was the clear sign he was looking for. The gold of this place was being given to him by God. No man would freely give away something so precious if God had not impelled him. Cristoforo's dream of a crusade to liberate Constantinople and then the Holy Land would be financed by the ornaments of savages. "I take this, then, in the name of my sovereign lords the King and Queen of Spain," he said. "Now we will go in search of the place where the gold is born."

It was not the safest group of Zapotecs to run into in the forest -- they were a war party, bent on finding a captive for sacrifice at the start of the rainy season. Their first thought would be that Hunahpu would make a splendid victim. He was taller and stronger than any man they had ever seen before, quite suitable for an offering of exceptional value.

So he had to preempt them -- to appear to them as one who already belonged to the gods. In the end, he virtually had to capture them. He had been blithely confident back in Juba that his plan would work. Here, when he was surrounded by the birdcalls and

whining insects of the marshy land of Chiapas, the plan seemed ludicrous, embarrassing, and painful.

He would have to imitate the most savage royal sacrifice ritual anywhere that didn't actually leave the king dead. Why had the Mayas been so inventively self-abusive?

Everything else was ready. He had hidden the library of the lost future in its permanent resting place and sealed the opening. He had cached the items he would need later in their weatherproof containers, and memorized all the permanent landmarks that would allow him to find them again. And the items he would need now, for the first year, were bundled in packaging that would not look too bizarre to the eyes of the Zapotecs. He himself was naked, his body painted, his hair feathered and beaded and jeweled to look like a Maya king's after a great victory. And, most important, on his head and draped down his back were the head and skin of the jaguar he had killed.

He had thirty minutes before the war party from the village of Atetulka would reach this clearing. If his blood was to be fresh he had to wait until the last minute, and now the last minute had arrived. He sighed, knelt in the soft leafmeal of the shadowed clearing, and reached for the topical anesthetic. The Mayas did this without anesthetic, he reminded himself as he applied it liberally to his penis and then waited a few minutes for it to become numb. Then, with a hypodermic gun, he deadened the entire genital area, hoping that he would have some opportunity to reapply the anesthetic in about four hours, when it began to wear off.

One genuine stingray needle and five imitation ones made of different metals. He took them one at a time in his hand and pushed each one crosswise into the loose skin along the top of his penis. The blood flow was copious, dripping all over his legs. Stingray needle, then silver, gold, copper, bronze, and iron. Even though there was no pain, he was dizzy by the end of it. From loss of blood? He doubted it. It was almost certainly the psychological effect of perforating his own penis that made him feel faint. Being a king among the Mayas was a serious business. Could he have done this without anesthetic? Hunahpu doubted it, saluting his ancestors even as he shuddered at their barbarism.

When the hunting party trotted silently into the clearing, Hunahpu stood in a shaft of light. The high-intensity lamp pointing upward between his legs caused the metal spines to glint and shimmer with the trembling of his body. As he had hoped, their eyes went right to where the blood still trickled down his thighs and dripped from the tip of his penis. They also took in his body paint and, just as he had expected, they seemed to recognize at once the significance of his appearance. They prostrated themselves.

"I am One-Hunahpu," he said in Maya. Then he repeated himself in Zapotecan. "I am One-Hunahpu. I come from Xibalba to you, dogs of Atetulka. I have decided that you will no longer be dogs, but men. If you obey me, you and all who speak the language of the Zapotec will be masters of this land. No longer will your sons go up to the altar of Huitzilopochtli, for I will break the back of the Mexica, I will tear out the heart of the Tlaxcala, and your ships will touch the shores of all the islands of the world."

The men lying on the ground began to tremble and moan.

"I command you to tell me why you are afraid, foolish dogs!"

"Huitzilopochtli is a terrible god!" cried one of them -- Yax, his name was. Hunahpu knew them all, of course, had studied their village and key people in the other Zapotec villages for years.

"Huitzilopochtli is almost as terrible as Fat Jaguar Girl," said Hunahpu.

Yax raised his head at this mention of his wife, and several of the other men laughed.

"Fat Jaguar Girl beats you with a stick when she thinks you have been planting corn in the wrong field," said Hunahpu, "but still you plant corn where you want."

"One-Hunahpu!" cried Yax. "Who told you about Fat Jaguar Girl?"

"In Xibalba I watched you all. I laughed at you when you cried under Fat Jaguar Girl's stick. And you, Flower-eating-Monkey, do you think I didn't see you pee on old Great-Skull-Zero's cornmeal and make them into frycakes for him? I laughed when he ate them."

The other men also laughed, and Flower-eating-Monkey raised his head with a smile. "You liked my revenge joke?"

"I told of your monkey tricks to the lords of Xibalba, and they laughed until they cried. And when Huitzilopochtli's eyes were filled with tears, I jabbed him with my thumbs and popped out his eyeballs." With this, Hunahpu reached into the pouch hanging from the string around his waist and brought out the two acrylic eyeballs he had brought with him. "Now Huitzilopochtli has to have a boy lead him around Xibalba, telling him what he sees. The other lords of Xibalba set obstacles in his path and laugh when he falls down. And now I have come here to the surface of Earth to make you into people."

"We will build a temple and sacrifice every man of the Mexica to you, O One-Hunahpu!" cried Yax.

Exactly the reaction he had expected. At once he threw one of the eyeballs of Huitzilopochtli at Yax, who yelped and rubbed his shoulder where it had hit him. Hunahpu had been a pretty good Little League pitcher with a decent fastball.

"Pick up the eyeball of Huitzilopochtli and hear my words, dogs of Atetulka!"

Yax scrabbled around in the leafmeal until he found the acrylic eye.

"Why do you think the lords of Xibalba were glad and didn't punish me when I took the eyes of Huitzilopochtli? Because he was fat from the blood of so many men. He was greedy and the Mexica fed him on blood that should have been out planting corn. Now all the lords of Xibalba are sick of blood, and they will make Huitzilopochtli go hungry until he is thin as a young tree."

They moaned again. The fear of Huitzilopochtli ran deep -- the success of the Mexica in war after war had seen to that -- and to hear such terrible threats against a powerful god was a heavy burden to place upon them. Well, they're tough little bastards, thought Hunahpu. And I'll give them plenty of courage when the time comes.

"The lords of Xibalba have called upon their king to come from a far country. He will forbid them to drink the blood of men or women ever again. For the King of Xibalba will shed his own blood, and when they drink of his blood and eat of his flesh they will never thirst or hunger anymore."

Hunahpu thought of his brother the priest and wondered what he would think of what was happening to the Christian gospel right now. In the long run, he would surely approve. But there would be some uncomfortable moments along the way.

"Rise up and look at me. Pretend to be men." They arose carefully from the forest floor and stood looking at him. "As you see me shed my blood here, so the King of Xibalba has already shed his blood for the lords of Xibalba. They will drink, and never thirst again. In that day will men cease to die to feed their god. Instead they will die in the water and rise up reborn, and then eat the flesh and drink the blood of the King of Xibalba just as the lords of Xibalba do. The King of Xibalba died in a faraway kingdom, and yet he lives again. The King of Xibalba is returning and he will make Huitzilopochtli bow down before him and will not let him drink of his blood or eat of his flesh until he is thin again, and that will take a thousand years, that old pig has eaten and drunk so much!"

He looked around at them, at the awe on their faces. Of course they were hardly taking this in, but Hunahpu had worked out with Diko and Kemal the doctrine he would teach to the Zapotecs and would repeat these ideas often until thousands, millions of people in the Caribbean basin could repeat them at will. It would prepare them for the coming of Columbus, if the others succeeded, but even if they did not, even if Hunahpu was the only one of the time travelers to reach his destination, it would prepare the Zapotecs to receive Christianity as something they had long expected. They could accept it without giving up one iota of their own native religion. Christ would simply be the King of Xibalba, and if the Zapotecs believed that he bore some small but bloody wounds in a place not often depicted in Christian art, it would be a heresy that the Catholics could learn to live with -- as long as the Zapotecs had the technology and the military power to stand against Europe. If the Christians could accommodate the Greek philosophers and a plethora of barbarian holidays and rituals and pretend that they had been Christian all along, they could deal with the slightly perverse spin that Hunahpu was putting on the doctrine of Jesus' sacrifice.

"You are wondering if I am the King of Xibalba," said Hunahpu, "but I am not. I am only the one who comes before, to announce his coming. I am not worthy to braid a feather into his hair."

Take that, Juan Batista.

"Here is the sign that he is coming to you. Every man of you will be taken sick, and every person in your village. This sickness will spread throughout the land, but you will not die of it unless your heart belonged to Huitzilopochtli. You will see that even among the Mexica, there were few who truly loved that gluttonous fat god!"

Let that be the story that would travel with and explain the virulent therapeutic plague that these men were already catching from him. The carrier virus would kill no more than one in ten thousand, making it an exceptionally safe vaccine as it left its "victims" with antibodies capable of fighting off smallpox, bubonic plague, cholera, measles, chicken pox, yellow fever, malaria, sleeping sickness, and as many other diseases as the medical researchers had been able to pile on back in the lost future. The carrier virus would remain as a childhood disease, reinfecting each new generation -- infecting the Europeans, too, when they came, and eventually all of Africa and Asia and every island of the sea. Not that disease would become unknown -- no one was foolish enough to think that bacteria and viruses would not evolve to fill the niches left by the defeat of these old killers. But disease would not give an advantage to one side over the other in the cultural rivalries to come. There would be no smallpox-infected blankets to kill off annoyingly persistent Indie tribes.

Hunahpu squatted down and picked up the high-intensity light from between his feet. It was enclosed in a basket. "The lords of Xibalba gave me this basket of light. It holds within it a small piece of the sun, but it only works for me." He shone the light in their eyes, temporarily blinding them, then reached one finger into a gap in the basket, pressing it on the identification plate. The light turned off. No reason to waste batteries -- this "basket of light" would have only a limited life, even with the solar collectors around the rim, and Hunahpu didn't want to waste it.

"Which of you will carry the gifts that the lords of Xibalba gave to One-Hunahpu when he came to this world to tell you of the coming of the King?"

Soon they were all reverently carrying bundles of equipment that Hunahpu would need during the coming months. Medical supplies for pertinent healings. Weapons for self-defense and for taking the courage out of enemy armies. Tools. Reference books stored in digital form. Appropriate costumes. Underwater breathing equipment. All sorts of useful little magic tricks.

The journey wasn't easy. Every step caused the weight of the metal spines to tug at his skin, opening the wounds wider and causing more bleeding. Hunahpu toyed with having the removal ceremony now, but decided against it. It was Yax's father, Na-Yaxhal, who was headman of the village, and to cement his authority and place him in the proper relationship with Hunahpu, he had to be the one to remove the spines. So Hunahpu walked on, slowly, step by step, hoping that the blood loss would remain minor, wishing that he had chosen a location just a little closer to the village.

When they were near, Hunahpu sent Yax on ahead, carrying the eyeball of Huitzilopochtli. Whatever jumble he might make of the things that Hunahpu had said to him, the gist of it would be clear enough, and the village would be turned out and waiting.

Waiting they were. All the other men of the village, armed with spears, ready to throw them, the women and children hidden in the woods. Hunahpu cursed. He had chosen this village specifically because Na-Yaxhal was smart and inventive. Why would Hunahpu imagine that he would believe at face value his son's story of a Maya king from Xibalba.

"Stop there, liar and spy!" cried Na-Yaxhal.

Hunahpu leaned back his head and laughed, as he inserted his finger into the basket of light and activated it. "Na-Yaxhal, does a man who woke up with painfully loose bowels twice in the night dare to stand before One-Hunahpu, who brings a basket of light from Xibalba?" With that he shone the light directly in Na-Yaxhal's eyes.

Six-Kauil's-Daughter, Na-Yaxhal's wife, cried out, "Spare my foolish husband!"

"Silence, woman!" answered Na-Yaxhal.

"He was up twice in the night with loose bowels, and he groaned with the pain of it!" she shouted. All the other women moaned with this confirmation of the stranger's secret knowledge, and the spears wavered and dipped.

"Na-Yaxhal, I will make you sick indeed. For two days your bowels will run like a fountain, but I will heal you and make you a man who serves the King of Xibalba. You will rule many villages and build ships to sail to every shore, but only if you kneel now before me. If you do not, I will cause you to fall over dead with a hole in your body that will not stop bleeding until you are dead!"

I won't have to shoot him, Hunahpu told himself. He'll obey and we'll become friends. But if he makes me, I can do it, I can kill him.

"Why does the man of Xibalba choose me for this greatness, when I am a dog?" called out Na-Yaxhal. It was a very promising rhetorical position for him to take.

"I choose you because you are the closest to human of all the dogs who bark in Zapotec, and because your wife is already a woman for two hours every day." There, that would reward the old bat for speaking out in Hunahpu's support.

Na-Yaxhal made up his mind and, as rapidly as his aging body -- he was nearly thirty-five -- would allow, he prostrated himself. The others in the village followed suit.

"Where are the women of Atetulka? Come out of hiding, you and all your children. Come out and see me! Among men I would be a king, but I am only the humblest servant of the King of Xibalba. Come out and see me!" Let's lay the groundwork of somewhat more egalitarian treatment of women now, at the beginning. "Stand with your families, all of you!"

They milled around, but it took only a few moments -- they already oriented themselves by clan and family, even when confronting an enemy, so it took little rearrangement to obey his command.

"Now, Na-Yaxhal, come forward. Take the first spine from my penis and paint the blood from it on your forehead, for you are the man who will be first king in the Kingdom of Xibalba-on-Earth, as long as you serve me, for I am the servant of the King of Xibalba!"

Na-Yaxhal came forward and pulled out the stingray spine. Hunahpu did not wince because there was no pain, but he could tell how the stingray spine tugged at his skin and imagined how nasty the pain would be tonight. If I ever see Diko again I don't want to hear her complain about anything she had to go through for the sake of our mission. Then he thought of the price Kemal intended to pay, and was ashamed.

Na-Yaxhal painted his forehead and nose, his lips and chin with the blood on the stingray spine.

"Six-Kauil's-Daughter!" The woman emerged from the midst of the leading clan of the village. "Draw out the next spine. What is it made of?"

"Silver," she said.

"Paint your neck with my blood."

She drew the long silver spine across her neck.

"You will be the mother of kings and your strength will be in the ships of the Zapotec people, if you serve the King of Xibalba-on-Earth, and me, the servant of the King of Xibalba!"

"I will," she murmured.

"Speak loudly!" Hunahpu commanded. "You did not whisper when you spoke wisely of the loose bowels of your husband! The voice of a woman can be heard as loud as the voice of a man, in the Kingdom of Xibalba-on-Earth!"

That's about all we can do for egalitarianism right now, Hunahpu said silently, but it should be revolutionary enough as the story spreads.

"Where is Yax!" cried Hunahpu.

The young man came forward timidly.

"Will you obey your father, and when he is carried to Xibalba will you lead this people in mercy and wisdom?"

Yax prostrated himself before Hunahpu.

"Take out the next spine. What is it made of?"

"Gold," said Yax, when he had it out.

"Paint your chest with my blood. All the gold of the world will be yours to command, when you are worthy to become king, as long as you remember that it belongs to the King of Xibalba, and not to you or any man. You will share it freely and fairly with all who drink the blood and eat the flesh of the King of Xibalba." That should help get the Catholic Church on the side of conciliation with the strange heretical proto-Christians when the two cultures met. If gold flowed freely to the Church, but only on condition that they confessed that they were eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the King of Xibalba, the heresy should find itself well on the way to become an acceptable variant of Catholic dogma. I wonder, thought Hunahpu, if I will be declared a saint. There will certainly be no lack of miracles, for a while, at least.

"Bacab, toolmaker, metalworker!" A thin young man came forward, and Hunahpu had him withdraw the next spine.

"It is copper, Lord One-Hunahpu, " said Bacab.

"Do you know copper? Can you work it better than any man?"

"I work it better than any man in this village, but there are surely other men in other places who work it better than I do."

"You will learn to mix it with many metals. You will make tools that no one in the world has seen. Paint my blood upon your belly!"

The coppersmith did as he was told. After a king, a king's wife, and a king's son, the metalworkers would now have the most prestige in the new kingdom.

"Where is Xocol-Ha-Man? Where is the master shipbuilder?"

A strong man with massive shoulders emerged from another clan, smiling in pride and slapping his shoulders in piety.

"Take out the next spine, Xocol-Ha-Man. You who are named for a great river in flood, you must tell me, have you ever seen this metal before?"

Xocol-Ha-Man fingered the bronze, getting blood all over his fingers. "It looks like copper, only brighter," he said. "I've never seen it."

Bacab looked at it too, and also shook his head.

"Pee on this metal, Xocol-Ha-Man. Make the current of the ocean within you flow upon it! For you will not paint my blood on your body until you have found this metal in another land. You will build ships and you will sail them until you find the land in the north where they know the name of this metal. When you bring back the name of this metal to me, then you will paint my blood upon your groin."

Only the iron spine remained. "Where is Xoc? Yes, I mean the slavegirl, the ugly girl you captured and no one would marry her!"

She was thrust forward, a filthy thirteen-year-old with a harelip.

"Take out the last spine, Xoc. Paint my blood upon your feet. For by the power of this last metal will the King of Xibalba make all slaves free. Today you are a free citizen of the Kingdom of Xibalba-on-Earth, Xoc. You belong to no man or woman, for no man or woman belongs to any other. The King of Xibalba commands it! There are no captives, no slaves, no servants-for-life in the Kingdom of Xibalba-on-Earth!"

For you, Tagiri.

But what he had given in pity was used in power. Xoc drew the iron spine from his penis and then, just as a Maya queen would have done, she stuck out her tongue, gripped the tip of it with her left hand, and with her right hand drove the spine through it. Blood flooded down her chin as the spine and her lips made a strange cross.

The people gasped. What Xoc was demanding was not the kindness of a lord toward a slave he plans to free, but the honor of a king for the queen who will bear his children.

What do I do with this? Who could have guessed, watching Xoc's abject servility during her months of slavery, that she had this kind of ambition? What did she mean to accomplish? Hunahpu studied her face and saw in it -- what, defiance? It was as if she saw through his whole charade and dared him to refuse her.

But no, it was not defiance. It was bravery in the face of fear. Of course she acted boldly. This kingly man who claimed to come from the land of the gods was the first chance she had to rise above her miserable condition. Who could blame her for acting as desperate people so often do, seizing on the first opportunity to reach far beyond all reasonable hope? What did she have to lose? In her despair, all salvation had seemed equally impossible. So why not try to be queen, as long as this One-Hunahpu seemed disposed to help her?

She is so ugly.

But smart and brave. Why close a door?

He reached down and drew the iron spine from her tongue. "Let truth flow from your mouth forever as blood does now. I am no king, and so I have no queen. But because you mixed your blood with mine upon this last spine, I promise that for the rest of your life, I will listen every day to one thing that you choose to tell me."

Gravely she nodded, her face showing relief and pride. He had turned away her bid to be a consort, but had accepted her as a counselor. And as he knelt and painted her feet with the bloody spine, she could not help but know that her life had been changed completely and forever. He had made her great in the eyes of those who had mistreated her.

As he rose to his feet, he put both hands on her shoulders and leaned close so he could whisper in her ear. "Do not seek vengeance now that you have power," he said in pure Maya, knowing that her native dialect was dose enough that she would understand him well enough. "Earn my respect by your generosity and truthfulness."

"Thank you," she answered.

Now back to the original script. I hope, thought Hunahpu, that there aren't too many more surprises like this.

But of course there would be. All he could ever do was improvise. His plans would all have to be adapted; only his purposes were unchangeable.

He flung out his voice over the crowd. "Let Bacab touch this metal. Let Xocol-Ha-Man see it!"

The men came forward, studied it in awe. Alone of all the spines, it would not bend, not even slightly. "I have never seen a metal so strong," said Bacab.

"Black," said Xocol-Ha-Man.

"There are many kingdoms, far across the sea, where this metal is as common as copper is here. They will know how to smelt it until it shines white as silver. These kingdoms already know the King of Xibalba, but he has hidden many secrets from them. It is the will of the King of Xibalba that the Kingdom of Xibalba-on-Earth find this metal and master it, if you are worthy of it! But for now, this black metal spine will stay with Xoc, who once was a slave, and you will come to her or to her children in order to see if you have found the hard black metal. The faraway people call it ferro and herro and iron and fer, but you will call it xibex, for it comes from Xibalba and must only be used in the service of the King."

The last of the spines was out of his body now. It made him feel pleasantly light, as if the weight of them had dragged him down.

"Let this now be a sign to all of you, that the King of Xibalba touches all men and women of the world. This village will be struck with a plague, but not one of you will die of it." That promise had a chance of failure -- the immunologists said that one in 100,000 would die of it. If one of those bad reactions came in Atetulka, Hunahpu would deal with it well enough. And compared to the millions who died of smallpox and other diseases in the old history, it was a small price to pay. "The plague will go forth from this village to every land, until all people have been touched by the finger of the King. And they will all say, From Atetulka came the sickness of the lords of Xibalba. It came first to you, because I came first to you, because the King of Xibalba chose you to lead the world. Not as the Mexica lead, in blood and cruelty, but as the King of Xibalba leads, in wisdom and strength." Might as well make the immunity virus part of the divinity show.

He looked around at their faces. Awe, and surprise, and, here and there, resentment. Well, that was to be expected. The power structure in this village was going to be transformed many times over before this was finished. Somehow these people would become leaders of a great empire. Only a few of them would be up to the challenge; many would be left behind, because they were suited only to the life of a village. There was no dishonor in that, but some would feel left out and hurt. Hunahpu would try to teach them to be content with what was possible to them, teach them to take pride in the achievements of others. But he could not change human nature. Some of them would go to their graves hating him for the changes that he brought. And he could never tell them how their lives might have ended, had he not interfered.

"Where will One-Hunahpu live?" he asked.

"In my house!" cried Na-Yaxhal at once.

"Will I take the house of the king of Atetulka, when he is only now becoming a man? It has been the house of dog-men and women! No, you must build me a new house, here, on this very spot." Hunahpu sat down cross-legged in the grass. "I will not move from this place until I have a new house around me. And over me, I will have a roof thatched from the roofs of all the houses of Atetulka. Na-Yaxhal, prove to me that you are a king. Organize your people to build me my house before darkness comes, and teach them their duties well enough that those who build it can do it without speaking a word."

It was already midday, but impossible as the task might look to the people, Hunahpu knew that it was well within their capacity to do it. The story of the building of One-Hunahpu's house would spread, and it would make others believe that they were indeed worthy to be the greatest city among the cities of the new Kingdom of Xibalba-on-Earth. Such stories were needed in forging a new nation with a will to empire. The people had to have an unshakable belief in their own worthiness.

And if they didn't make it before nightfall, Hunahpu would simply fire up the basket of light and declare that the lords of Xibalba were lengthening the day with this piece of sunlight so they could finish building the house before nightfall. Either way, the story would be a good one.

The people quickly left him alone as Na-Yaxhal organized them to build him a house. Able to relax at last, Hunahpu got the disinfectant out of one of his bags and applied it to his wounded penis. It contained agents to promote clotting and healing, and soon the flow of blood would become mere seepage and then stop. Hunahpu's hands trembled as he applied the salve. Not from pain, for that had not yet begun, nor even from loss of blood, but rather from relief after the tension of the ceremonies just past.

In retrospect it had been as easy to overawe these people as he had imagined it would be back when he had proposed his plan to the others in the lost future. Easy, but Hunahpu had never been so frightened in his life. How did Columbus manage it, boldly creating a future? Only because he knew so little of how futures could go wrong, Hunahpu decided, only because of ignorance could he shape the world so fearlessly.

"It's hard to imagine that these are the great kingdoms of the east that we read about in Marco Polo's account," said Sanchez.

Cristoforo could hardly argue with him. Colba seemed vast enough to be the mainland of Asia, but the Indians insisted that it was an island and that another island to the southeast, called Haiti, was much richer and had far more gold. Could that be Cipangu? Possibly. But it was discouraging to have to keep assuring the sailors and, above all, the royal functionaries that untold wealth was just a few more days' sailing away.

When would God allow him the moment of triumph? When would all the promises of gold and great kingdoms be obviously, dearly fulfilled so that he could return to Spain as Viceroy and Admiral of the Ocean-Sea?

"What does that matter?" said Don Pedro. "The greatest wealth of this place is before you in plain sight."

"What do you mean?" asked Sanchez. "The only thing this land is wealthy in is trees and insects."

"And people," said Don Pedro. "The gentlest, most peaceful people I've ever seen. It will be no trouble at all to get them to work, and they'll obey their masters perfectly. There's no fight in them at all, can't you see that? Can't you imagine what price they would fetch as the most docile of servants?"

Cristoforo frowned. That same thought had occurred to him, but it troubled him all the same. Was it what the Lord had had in mind, to convert them and enslave them at the same time? Yet there was no other source of wealth in sight, here in the land God had led him to. And it was obvious that these savages were completely unfit to be made into soldiers in a Crusade.

If God had meant these savages to be free Christians, he would have taught them to wear clothing instead of going about naked.

"Of course," said Cristoforo. "We will bring a sample of these people back to Their Majesties when we return. But I imagine that it will be more profitable to keep them here in the land they're acclimated to, and use them to mine gold and other precious metals while we teach them of Christ and see to their salvation."

The others heard him without disagreement -- how could they argue with something so obviously true? Besides, they were still weak and weary from the illness that had swept through the crews of all three ships, obliging them to drop anchor and rest for several days. No one died from it -- it was nowhere near as virulent as the terrible plagues that the Portuguese had run into in Africa, forcing them to build their forts on offshore islands. But it had left Cristoforo with quite a headache, and he was sure the others suffered from it, too. If it didn't hurt so much, he might wish for it to continue forever, since it kept them from raising their voices. The royal functionaries were much more tolerable when pain kept them from becoming strident.

They had been livid back when they reached the city called Cubanacan. Cristoforo had thought that the last syllable of the name referred to the Great Khan of Marco Polo's writing, but when they reached the "city" the natives had babbled about, it turned out to be a miserable collection of huts, perhaps a bit more populated than the other squalid villages that they had seen on this island. City of the Khan indeed. Sanchez had dared to raise his voice then, in front of the men. Maybe this minor plague was God's remonstrance against his insubordinate complaining. Maybe God wanted to give him something to whine about.

Tomorrow or the next day they would sail for Haiti. Perhaps there they would see some sign of the great civilizations of Cipangu or Cathay. And in the meantime, these miserable islands would at least be a source of slaves, and as long as the royal functionaries were willing to back him up, that might be enough to justify the cost of a second voyage, should they fail to find the Khan himself on this first trip.

Kemal sat glumly on the crest of the promontory, looking out to the northwest for a sail. Columbus was late.

And if he was late, all bets were off. It meant that some change had already been introduced, something that would delay him in Colba. Kemal might have been encouraged to think of this as proof that one of the others had successfully made the trip into the past, except that he was quite aware that the change might have been caused by him. The only influence that could reach from the island of Haiti to the island of Colba was the carrier virus -- and even though he had only been here for two months, that was plenty of time for the virus to have been spread to Colba by a raiding party in a seagoing canoe. The Spaniards must have contracted the virus.

Or worse. The gentle plague might have caused a change in behavior by the Indies. There might have been bloodshed, bad enough to make the Europeans head for home. Or Columbus might have been told something that led him to take a different route circling Haiti counterclockwise, for instance, instead of charting the north shore.

They had known that the virus could upset their plans, because it would move faster and farther than the time travelers could. Yet it was also the surest, most basic aspect of their plan. What if only one traveler got through, and then was killed immediately? Even so, the virus would be communicated to those who touched the body during the first few hours. If no other change could be introduced, this one might be enough -- to keep the Indies from being swept away in a tide of European diseases.

So it's a good thing, Kemal told himself. A good thing that Columbus is late, because it means that the virus is doing its work. We've already changed the world. We've already succeeded.

Only it didn't feel like success to him. Living on stored rations, hiding out here on this isolated promontory, watching for the sails, Kemal wanted to accomplish something more personal than being the carrier of a healing virus. Allah wills whatever happens, he knew, but he was not so pious that he could keep himself from wishing he could whisper a word or two in Allah's ear. A few pointed suggestions.

It wasn't until the third day that he saw a sail. Too early in the day. In the old version of history, Columbus had arrived later, which was why the Santa Maria wrecked, running against a submerged reef in the darkness. Now it wouldn't be dark. And even if it were, the currents and winds would not be the same. Kemal would have to destroy all three ships. Worse, without the the accident with the Santa Maria, there would be no reason for the Nina to drop anchor. Kemal would have to follow along the shore and watch for his opportunity. If it came.

If I fail, thought Kemal, the others may still succeed. If Hunahpu manages to preempt the Tlaxcalans and create a Zapotec-Tarascan empire that has abandoned or downplayed human sacrifice, then the Spanish won't have such an easy time of it. If Diko is somewhere in the highlands, she may be able to create a new proto-Christian religion and, conceivably, a unified Caribbean empire that the Spaniards will not easily crack. After all, Spanish success depended almost entirely upon the inability of the Indies to organize serious resistance. So even if Columbus gets back to Europe, history will still be different.

He could whisper all these reassuring things, but they tasted like ashes in his mouth. If I fail, America loses its fifty years of preparation before the Europeans come.

Two ships. Not three. That was a relief. Or was it? As long as history was changing, it might have been better for Columbus's fleet to stay together. Pinzўn had taken the Pinta away from the rest of the fleet, just as in the former history. But now who could guess whether Pinzўn would have his change of heart and sail back to Haiti to rejoin Columbus? This time he might simply go on eastward, arriving in Spain first and claiming all the credit for Columbus's discovery.

That's out of my hands, Kemal told himself. The Pinta will either come back or it will not. I have the Nina and the Santa Maria, and I must make sure that they, at least, never return to Spain.

Kemal watched until he could see that the ships were turning south, to round the Cape of San Nicolas. Would they take the same course they had followed in the prior history, sailing south a bit more, then turning back to chart the north coast of the island of Haiti? Nothing was predictable anymore, even if logic proclaimed that whatever reasons Columbus had for his actions in the other history, the same reasons would hold sway this time, too.

Kemal picked his way carefully down to the stand of trees near the water where he had concealed his inflatable boat. Unlike lifeboats, this one was not bright orange. Rather it was a greenish blue, designed to be invisible on the water. Kemal pulled on his wet suit, also greenish blue, and pulled the boat into the water. Then he loaded it with enough underwater charges to deal with both the Santa Maria and the Niha, should the opportunity present itself. Then he started up the engine and put out to sea.

It took him a half hour to be far enough from shore to be reasonably confident of being invisible to the keen-eyed watchers on the Spanish caravels. Only then did he sail westward far enough to see the Spanish sails. To his relief, they had dropped anchor off Cape San Nicolas and small boats were putting to shore. It might be December ninth rather than the sixth, but Columbus was making the same decisions he had made before. The weather was getting cold, for this part of the world, and Columbus would have the same problems getting through the channel between Tortuga and Haiti until the fourteenth of December. Perhaps Kemal would be better off if he put back to shore and waited for history to repeat itself.

Or perhaps not. Columbus would be anxious to sail east in order to beat Pinzўn back to Spain, and this time he might go out around Tortuga, tacking into the trade winds and completely avoiding the treacherous shore winds that would drive him onto the reefs. This might be Kemal's last chance.

But then, Cape San Nicolas was far from where Diko's tribe lived -- if in fact she had succeeded in becoming part of the village that had first called to the people of the future to save them. Why make things harder for her?

He would wait and watch.

At first when the Pinta started slipping farther and farther away, Cristoforo supposed that Pinzўn was avoiding some hazard in the water. Then, as the caravel drifted nearer the horizon, Cristoforo tried to believe what the men were telling him -- that the Pinta must be unable to read the signals that Cristoforo was sending. This was nonsense, of course. The Nina also lay to portside, and was having no trouble at all staying on course. By the time the Pinta dropped over the horizon, Cristoforo knew that Pinzўn had betrayed him, that the one-time pirate was now determined to sail direct for Spain and report to Their Majesties before Cristoforo could get there. Never mind that it would be Cristoforo who was recognized officially as the head of the expedition, or that the royal officials traveling with the expedition would report Pinzўn's perfidy -- it would be Pinzўn who would reap the first fame, Pinzўn whose name would live through history as the man who returned first to Europe from the westward route to the Orient.

Pinzўn had never sailed far enough south to know that this steady east wind gave way, in lower latitudes, to the steady west wind that Cristoforo had felt when he sailed in Portuguese vessels. So there was a good chance that if Cristoforo could just get far enough south, he could reach Spain long before Pinzўn, who would no doubt be tacking his way across the Atlantic, a slow proposition at best. There was a good chance that Pinzўn's progress would be so slow that he would have to give up and return to these islands to resupply his caravel.

A good chance, but no certainty, and Cristoforo could not shake the sense of urgency -- and barely suppressed fury -- that Pinzўn's disloyalty had provoked. Worst of all, there was no one in whom he could confide, for the men were doubtless all rooting for Pinzўn to win, while in front of the officers and the royal officials Cristoforo could show no weakness or worry.

So it was that Cristoforo took little pleasure in charting the unknown coast of the great island the natives called Haiti, and which Cristoforo had named Hispafiola. Perhaps he might have enjoyed the charting more if it had proceeded steadily, but the east wind was against him all along the coast. They had to harbor for days at the place that the men called Mosquito Bay, and again for several days at Paradise Valley. The men had made much of these stops, for the people here were taller and healthier, and two of the women light enough of skin that they were nicknamed "the Spaniards" by the men. As a Christian commander, Cristoforo had to pretend not to know what else was going on between the sailors and the women who came out to the caravels. Some of the tension of the voyage eased at Paradise Valley. But not for Cristoforo, who counted every day's delay as that much better a chance for Pinzўn to arrive first in Spain.

When Cristoforo finally got them moving, it was by sailing in the evening and hugging the coastline, where the breeze from shore counteracted the prevailing easterlies and carried them smoothly eastward. Even though the nights were clear, it was a dangerous business, sailing at night on an unfamiliar coastline, for no one knew what hazards there might be beneath the water. But Cristoforo could see no choice. It was either sail west and south around the island, which could be so huge that it would take months to circumnavigate it, or sail at night on the shore breezes. God would protect the ships, because if he didn't, the voyage would fail, or at least Cristoforo's part of it. What mattered now was getting back to Spain with glorious reports that concealed the disappointing amount of gold and the generally low level of civilization, so that Their Majesties would outfit a real fleet and he could do some serious exploring until he found the lands Marco Polo had written of.

What bothered Cristoforo most, however, was something that he could not explain even to himself. During the days, as they lay at anchor and Cristoforo worked on charting the coast, he would sometimes turn away from the coast and look out over the open sea. It was then that he sometimes saw something out on the water. It would be visible only for a few moments at a time, and no one else reported seeing it at all. But Cristoforo knew that he had seen it, whatever it was -- a patch of water that was slightly different in color from the water around it, and several times a shape like a man standing half in and half out of the water. The first time he saw the manshape, he immediately remembered all the Genovese sailors' tales of mermen and other monsters of the deep. But whatever it was, it was always far out to seaward, and came no closer. Was it some spiritual apparition, some sign from the Lord? Or was it a sign of the enmity of Satan, watching, waiting for some chance to disrupt this Christian expedition?

Once, just once, Cristoforo caught a glimpse of light as if whatever it was had a glass of its own and was watching him as steadily as he was watching it.

Of this Cristoforo wrote nothing in his log. Indeed, he tended to dismiss it as a sign of some slight madness brought about by tropical latitudes and the worries about Pinzўn. Until disaster struck in the early hours of Christmas morning.

Cristoforo was awake in his cabin. It was hard for him to sleep when the ship was sailing so dangerously close to land, and so he stayed awake most nights, studying his charts or writing in his log or his private diary. Tonight, though, he had done nothing more than lie on his bed, thinking about all that had happened in his life so far, marveling at how things had worked out despite all adversity, and finally praying, giving thanks to God for what had looked at the time like divine neglect, but now looked like miraculous shepherding. Forgive me for misunderstanding you, for expecting you to measure time by the short moments of a man's life. Forgive me for my fears and doubts along the way, for I see now that you were always at my side, watching over me and protecting me and helping me to accomplish your will.

A shudder ran through the boat, and from the deck came a scream.

Kemal watched through his nightsights, hardly believing his good fortune. Why had he ever worried? Weather had been the cause of Columbus's delays in the prior history, and the same weather determined his progress now. Waiting for favorable winds had brought him to this spot just past Cape Haitien on Christmas Eve, within fifteen minutes of when he had arrived in Kemal's former past. The same currents and similar winds had caused the Santa Maria to drift onto a reef, just as before. It was still possible for everything to work just right.

Of course, it had always been the human factor, not the weather, that was expected to change. For all the talk of how a butterfly's wing in Beijing could cause a hurricane in the Caribbean, Manjam had explained to Kemal that pseudochaotic systems like weather were actually quite stable in their underlying patterns, and swallowed up random tiny fluctuations.

The real problem was the decision making of the men on the voyage. Would they do what they had done before? Kemal had watched the sinking of the Santa Maria a hundred times or more, since so much depended on it. The ship sank because of several factors, any one of which might be changed on a whim. First, Columbus had to be sailing at night -- and to Kemal's relief, he was consistently doing just that in order to fight the trade winds. Then, both Columbus and Juan de la Cosa, the owner and master of the ship, had to be belowdecks, leaving the piloting of the ship in the hands of Peralonso Nino -- which was proper enough, since he was the pilot. But Nino then had to take a nap, leaving the helm in the hands of one of the ship's boys, giving him a star to steer by, which would be fine for an ocean voyage but was hardly helpful when sailing along a treacherous and unfamiliar coast.

In the event, the only difference was that it wasn't the same ship's boy -- from his height and manner, Kemal could tell even at a distance that this time it was Andres Yevenes, a bit older. But whatever experience Andres had would hardly help him now -- no one had charted this coast, so even the most experienced pilot wouldn't have known that shelves of coral would be so close to the surface without making any visible change in the sea.

Even this had still been recoverable even in the prior history, for Columbus immediately gave orders which, if they had been obeyed , would have saved the ship. What really sank the Santa Maria was its owner, Juan de la Cosa, who panicked and not only disobeyed Columbus's orders but made it impossible for anyone else to obey him. From that point the caravel had been doomed.

Kemal, studying de la Cosa from the beginning of his life to the end, was unable to discover why he did such an inexplicable thing. De la Cosa never told the same story twice, and obviously lied every time. Kemal's only conclusion was that de la Cosa had panicked at the prospect of the ship sinking and had simply got away as quickly and effectively as possible. By the time it became obvious that there was plenty of time to take all the men off without serious danger, it was far too late to save the ship. At that point, de la Cosa could hardly admit to cowardice -- or whatever his motive was.

The ship shuddered from the impact, then listed over to one side. Kemal watched anxiously. He was in full scuba gear, ready to come in close and put an explosive charge under the caravel in case it looked as though Columbus was about to save it. But it would be better if this ship could sink without inexplicable fires or explosions.

Juan de la Cosa stumbled out of his cabin and clambered up to the quarterdeck, not quite awake, but definitely inside a nightmare. His caravel had run aground! How could such a thing have happened? There was Colўn, already on deck and angry. As always, Juan was filled with anger at the very sight of the Genovese courtier. If Pinzўn had been in charge, there would have been no such nonsense as sailing at night. It was all Juan could do to get to sleep at night, knowing that his caravel was coasting a strange shore in darkness. And, just as he had feared, they had run aground. They would all drown, if they couldn't get off the ship before it sank.

One of the ship's boys -- Andres, the one that Nino fancied this week -- was offering his pathetic excuses. "I kept my eye fixed on the star he pointed at, and kept the mast lined up with it." He looked and sounded terrified.

The ship lurched heavily to one side.

We will sink, thought Juan. I will lose everything. "My caravel," he cried out. "My little ship, what have you done to it!"

Colўn turned to him with icy coldness. "Were you sleeping well?" he asked acidly. "Nino certainly was."

And shouldn't the ship's master be asleep? Juan wasn't the pilot and he wasn't the navigator. He was just the owner. Hadn't it been made clear to him that he had almost no authority, except as bestowed on him by Colўn? As a Basque, Juan was as much a foreigner among these Spaniards as Colўn himself, so that he got condescension from the Italian, contempt from the Spanish royal officers, and mockery from the Spanish sailors. But now, after having all control and respect stripped away, it was suddenly his fault that the ship ran aground?

The ship listed further to port.

Colўn was speaking, but Juan had trouble concentrating on what he said. "The stern is heavy, and we've dragged onto an underwater reef or shelf. We'll make no headway forward. There's no choice for it but to warp the ship off."

This was the stupidest thing Juan had ever heard of. It was dark, the ship was sinking, and Colўn wanted to try some stupid maneuver instead of saving lives? That's what you'd expect of an Italian -- what were Spanish lives to him? And when it came to that, what was a Basque life to the Spaniards? Colўn and the officers would get first call on the boats, but they wouldn't care what happened to Juan de la Cosa. While the men would never let him into a boat if they had a choice. He could see it, had always seen it in their eyes.

"Warp the ship off," said Cristoforo again. "Take the launch out, carry the anchor to sternward, drop it, and then use the windlass to draw us off the rock."

"I know what warping is," Juan answered. This fool, did he think he could teach seamanship to him?

"Then see to it, man!" Cristoforo commanded. "Or do you want to lose your caravel here in these waters?"

Well, let Colўn give his orders -- he knew nothing. Juan de la Cosa was a better Christian than any of these men. The only way to get all the crew off was to bring the Nina's boats over to help. Forget drawing the anchor out -- that would be slow and time-consuming and men would die. Juan would save every life on this ship, and the men would know who cared for them. Not that braggart Pinzўn, who selfishly took off on his own. Certainly not Colўn, who thought only of the success of his expedition, never mind if men died in the doing of it. I'm the one, Juan de la Cosa, the Basque, the northerner, the outsider. I am the one who will help you live to return to your families in Spain.

Juan immediately set several men to lowering the launch. In the meantime, he heard Colўn barking orders to furl the sails and free the anchor. Oh, what an excellent idea, thought Juan. The ship will sink with sails furled. That will make a huge difference to the sharks.

The launch dropped into the water with a splash. At once the launch's crew of three oarsmen scrambled down the lines and began untying the knots to free the launch from the caravel. In the meantime, Juan tried to climb down the rope ladder, which, with the ship tilting, dangled in midair and swayed dangerously. Let me live to reach the launch, Holy Mother, he prayed, and then I will be a hero to save the others.

His feet found the boat but he could not pry his fingers away from the rope ladder.

"Let go!" demanded Pe¤a, one of the seamen.

I'm trying, thought Juan. Why aren't my hands working?

"He's such a coward," muttered Bartolome. They pretend to speak softly, thought Juan, but they always make sure I can hear them.

His fingers opened. It had only been a moment. No one could be expected to act with perfect control when death by drowning lurked only moments away.

He clambered over Pe¤a to get to his place at the stern, controlling the tiller. "Row," he said.

As they began pulling, Bartolome, sitting in the bow, called the rhythm. He had once been a soldier in the Spanish army, but was arrested for stealing -- he was one of those who joined the voyage as a criminal hoping for pardon. Most of the criminals were treated badly by the others, but Bartolome's military experience had earned him some grudging respect from the others -- and the slavish devotion of the other criminals. "Pull," he said. "Pull."

As they rowed, Juan turned the tiller hard to port.

"What are you doing?" demanded Bartolome, when he saw that the launch was pulling away from the Santa Maria instead of heading for the bow, where the anchor was already beginning to descend.

"Do your job and I'll do mine!" shouted Juan.

"We're supposed to lie under the anchor!" answered Bartolome.

"Do you trust your life to the Genovese? We're going to the Nina for help!"

The seamen's eyes widened. This was a direct contravention of orders. It bordered on mutiny against Colўn. They still didn't resume pulling on the oars. "De la Cosa," said Pe¤a, "aren't you going to try to save the caravel?"

"It's my ship!" cried Juan. "And it's your lives! Pull on your oars and we can save everyone! Pull! Pull!"

Bartolome took up the chant, and they pulled.

Only now did Colўn trouble to notice what they were doing. Juan could hear him crying out from the quarterdeck. "Come back! What are you doing? Come and lie under the anchor!"

But Juan looked fiercely at the seamen. "If you want to live to see Spain again, then all we can hear is the splashing of the oars."

Wordlessly they rowed, hard and fast. The Nina grew larger in the distance, the Santa Maria smaller behind them.

It's amazing which events turn out to have been inevitable, thought Kemal, and which can be changed. The sailors all slept with different native women in Paradise Valley this time, so that apparently the choice of bedmates was entirely by random whim. But when it came to disobeying the only order that could have saved the Santa Mafia, Juan de la Cosa apparently made the same choice no matter what. Love is random; fear is inevitable. Too bad I'll never get a chance to publish this finding.

I'm done with telling stories. I can only act out the end of my life. Who then will decide the meaning of my death? I will, as best I can. But then it will be out of my hands. They will make of me whatever they want, if they remember me at all. The world in which I discovered a great secret of the past and became famous no longer exists. Now I'm in a world where I was never born and have no past. A lone Muslim saboteur, who somehow made his way to the New World? Who in the future will believe such a fantastic tale? Kemal imagined what the learned articles would sound like, explaining the psychosocial origin of the Lone Muslim Bomber legends from the voyage of Columbus. It brought a smile to his face, as the crew of the Santa Maria rowed for the Nina.

Diko came back to Ankuash with two full baskets of water hanging from the yoke over her shoulder. She had made the yoke herself, when it became clear to them all that no one in the village was as strong as Diko. It shamed the others, to see her carry her water so easily when for them it was so hard. So she made the yoke so she could carry twice as much, and then she insisted on hauling the water alone, so that no one else could be compared to her. She made three trips a day to the stream under the falls. It kept her strong, and she appreciated the solitude.

The others were waiting for her, of course -- the water from her large baskets would be poured out into many smaller vessels, most of them clay pots. But she could see even from a distance that there was an eagerness to them. News then.

"The white men's canoe was taken by the spirits in the water!" cried Putukam, as soon as Diko was close enough to hear. "On the very day you said!"

"So now maybe Guacanagari will believe the warning and protect his young girls." Guacanagari was the cacique over most of northwestern Haiti. He fancied sometimes that his authority extended all the way up the mountains of Cibao to Ankuash, though he had never attempted to test this theory in battle -- there was nothing this high up in Cibao that he wanted. Guacanagari's dreams of being ruler of all of Haiti had led him in the prior history to make a fatal alliance with the Spanish. If they had not had him and his people to spy for them and even fight beside them, the Spanish might not have prevailed; other Taino leaders might have been able to unite Haiti in some kind of effective resistance. But that would not happen this time. Guacanagari's ambition would still be his guiding principle, but it would not have the same devastating effect. For Guacanagari would only be a friend to the Spanish when they seemed strong. As soon as they seemed weak, he would be their deadliest enemy. Diko knew enough not to trust his word even for a moment. But he was still useful, because he was predictable to one who understood his hunger for glory.

Diko squatted down to take the yoke from her shoulders. Others held up the water baskets and began to pour them off into other vessels.

"Guacanagari, listen to a woman of Ankuash?" said Baiku skeptically. He was taking water into three pots. Little Inoxtla had cut himself badly in a fall, and Baiku was preparing a poultice, a tea, and a steam for him.

One of the younger women immediately rushed to Diko's defense. "He must believe Sees-in-the-Dark! All her words come true."

As always, Diko denied her supposed prophetic gifts, though it had been her intimate knowledge of the future that kept her from living as a slave or the cacique's fifth wife. "It is Putukam who sees true visions, and Baiku who heals. I haul water."

The others fell silent, for none of them had ever understood why Diko would say something which was so obviously false. Who ever heard of a person who refused to admit what she did well? Yet she was the strongest, tallest, wisest, and holiest person they had ever seen or heard of, and so if she said this, then there must be some meaning in it, though it could not be taken at face value, of course.

Think what you want, Diko said silently. But I know that the day has now come when I will have no more knowledge of the future than you have, because it will not be the future that I remembered.

"And what of the Silent Man?" she asked.

"Oh, they say he is still in his boat made of water and air, watching."

Another added, "They say these white people can't see him at all. Are they blind?"

"They don't know how to watch things," said Diko. "They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see. The Tainos down on the coast know how to see his boat made of water and air, because they saw him make it and put it into the water. They expect to see it. But the white men have never seen it before, so their eyes don't know how to find it."

"Still they're very stupid not to see," said Goala, a teenage boy freshly into his manhood.

"You are very bold," said Diko. "I'd be afraid to be your enemy."

Goala preened.

"But I'd be even more afraid to be your friend in battle. You are sure your enemy is stupid because he doesn't do things as you would do them. It will make you careless, and your enemy will surprise you, and your friend will die."

Goala went silent, while the others laughed.

"You haven't seen the boat made of water and air," said Diko. "So you don't know how hard or easy it is to see it."

"I want to see it," said Goala quietly.

"It will do you no good to see it," said Diko, "because no one in the world has the power to make one like it, and no one will have such power for more than four hundred years." Unless technology moved even faster in this new history. With luck, this time technology would not outstrip the ability of human beings to understand it, to control it, to dean up after it.

"You make no sense at all," said Goala.

The others gasped -- only a man so young would speak so disrespectfully to Sees-in-the-Dark.

"Goala is thinking," said Diko, "that it is the thing that will only be seen once in five hundred years that a man should go and see. But I tell you that it is only the thing that a man can learn from and use to help his tribe and his family that is worth going to see. The man who sees the boat made of water and air has a story that his children will not believe. But the man who learns how to make a great wooden canoe like the ones the Spaniards sail in can cross oceans with heavy cargo and many passengers. It is the Spaniard's canoes you want to see, not the boat made of water and air."

"I don't want to see the white men at all," said Putukam with a shudder.

"They are only men," said Diko. "Some of them are very bad, and some of them are very good. All of them know how to do things that no one in Haiti knows how to do, and yet there are many things that every child in Haiti knows that these men do not understand at all."

"Tell us!" several of them cried.

"I've told you all these stories about the coming of the white men," said Diko. "And today there's work to do."

They voiced their disappointment like children. And why shouldn't they? Such was the trust within the village, within the tribe, that no one was afraid to tell what he desired. The only feelings they had to hide from their fellow villagers were the truly shameful feelings, like fear and malice.

Diko carried her yoke and her empty water baskets back to her house -- a hut, really. Thankfully no one was waiting for her there. She and Putukam were the only women to have houses of their own, and ever since the first time Diko had taken in a woman whose husband was angry at her and threatened to beat her, Putukam had joined her in making her house available as a refuge for women. There had been a great deal of tension at the beginning, since Nugkui, the cacique, correctly saw Diko as a rival for power in the village. It only came to violence once, when three men came in the shadow of night, armed with spears. It had taken her about twenty seconds to disarm all three of them, break the spear shafts, and send them staggering away with many cuts and bruises and sore muscles. They were simply no match for her size and strength -- and her martial-arts training.

It wouldn't have kept them from trying something later -- an arrow, a dart, a fire -- except that Diko had taken action at first light. She gathered up her belongings and began giving them away as gifts to other women. This immediately aroused the whole village. "Where are you going?" they demanded. "Why are you leaving?" She had answered disingenuously: "I came to this village because I thought I heard a voice calling me here. But last night I had a vision of three men attacking me in the darkness, and I knew that the voice must have been wrong, it was not this village, because this village doesn't want me. I must go now and find the right village, the one that has a need for a tall black woman to carry their water." After much remonstrance, she agreed to stay for three days. "By the end of that time, I will go unless everybody in Ankuash has asked me, one at a time, to stay, and promised to make me their aunt or their sister or their niece. If even one person does not want me here, I will go."

Nugkui was no fool. Much as he might resent her authority, he knew that having her in the village gave Ankuash enormous prestige among the Taino who lived farther down the mountain. Didn't they send their sick to Ankuash now to be healed? Didn't they send messengers to ask the meanings of events or to learn what Sees-in-the-Dark predicted for the future? Until Diko came, the people of Ankuash were despised as the people who lived in the cold place on the mountain. It was Diko who had explained that their tribe was the first to live on Haiti, that their ancestors were the first to be brave enough to sail from island to island. "For a long time, the Taino have had their way here, and the Caribs want to do the same to them," she explained. "But the time is soon coming when Ankuash will once again lead all the people of Haiti. For this is the village that will tame the white men."

Nugkui was not about to let this exalted future slip away. "I want you to stay," he had said, gruffly.

"I'm glad to hear that. Have you seen Baiku about that nasty bruise on your forehead? You must have bumped into a tree when you went out to pee in the dark."

He glared at her. "Some say you do things a woman shouldn't do."

"But if I do them, then they must be things that I believe a woman should do."

"Some say that you are teaching their wives to be rebellious and lazy."

"I never teach anyone to be lazy. I work harder than anybody, and the best women of Ankuash follow my example."

"They work hard, but they don't always do what their husbands tell them."

"But they do almost everything that their husband ask them to do," said Diko. "Especially when their husbands do everything the women ask them to do."

Nugkui had sat there for a long while, sucking on his anger.

"That cut on your arm looks ugly," said Diko. "Was somebody careless with his spearpoint on yesterday's hunt?"

"You change everything," said Nugkui.

Here was the crux of the negotiation. "Nugkui, you are a brave and wise leader. I watched you for a long time before I came here. Wherever I went, I knew that I would make changes, because the village that teaches the white men how to be human has to be different from all other villages. There will be a dangerous time when the white men are not yet tamed, when you may need to lead our men in war. And even in peace, you are the cacique. When people come to me for judgment, don't I always send them to you? Don't I always show you respect?"

Grudgingly he admitted that she did.

"I have seen a terrible future, in which the white men come, thousands upon thousands of them, and make our people into slaves -- the ones they don't kill outright. I have seen a future in which on the whole island of Haiti there is not one Taino, not one Carib, not one man or woman or child of Ankuash. I came here to prevent that terrible future. But I can't do it alone. It depends on you as much as on me. I don't want you to obey me. I don't want to rule over you. What village would respect Ankuash, if the cacique took orders from a woman? But what cacique deserves respect, if he can't learn wisdom just because a woman teaches it to him?"

He watched her impassively, and then said, "Sees-in-the-Dark is a woman who tames men."

"The men of Ankuash are not animals. Sees-in-the-Dark came here because the men of Ankuash have already tamed themselves. When women took refuge in my tent, or Putukam's, the men of this village could have torn apart the walls and beaten their wives, or killed them -- or Putukam, or even me, because I may be clever and strong but I am not immortal and I can be killed."

Nugkui blinked at that statement.

"But the men of Ankuash are truly human. They were angry with their wives, but they respected the door of my house and the door of Putukam's house. They stayed outside, and waited until their anger had cooled. Then their wives came out, and no one was beaten, and things were better. They say that Putukam and I were making trouble, but you are the cacique. You know that we were helping make peace. But it only worked because the men and women of this village wanted peace. It only worked because you, as cacique, allowed it to work. If you saw another cacique act as you have acted, wouldn't you call him wise?"

"Yes," said Nugkui.

"I also call you wise," said Diko. "But I won't stay unless I can also call you my uncle."

He shook his head. "That wouldn't be right. I'm no uncle to you, Sees-in-the-Dark. No one would believe it. They would know that you were only pretending to be my niece."

"Then I can't stay," she said, rising to her feet.

"Sit down," he said. "I can't be your uncle, and I won't be your nephew, but I can be your brother."

Diko had fallen to her knees before him then, and embraced him where he sat on the ground. "Oh, Nugkui, you are the man I hoped for."

"You are my sister," he said again, "but I thank every pasuk that lives in these woods that you are not my wife." With that he got up and left her house. From then on they were allies -- once Nugkui's word was given, he didn't break it or allow any of the angry men to break it either. The result was inevitable. The men learned that rather than have the public humiliation of their wives taking refuge in the house of Diko or Putukam, they would control their anger, and no woman had been beaten in Ankuash for more than a year. Now women were more likely to come to Diko's house to complain about a husband who had lost his desire for her, or to ask her for magic or prophecy. She gave them neither, but instead offered sympathy and common sense advice.

Alone in her house, she took up the calendar she was keeping, and reviewed in her mind the events that would come in the next few days. Down on the coast, the Spanish would be turning to Guacanagari for help. In the meantime, Kemal -- the one the Indies called Silent Man -- would be destroying the other Spanish ships. If he failed, or if the Spanish succeeded in building new ships and sailed for home, then her work would be to unify the Indies to prepare them to beat off the Spanish. But if the Spanish were stranded here, then her work would be to spread stories that would lead Columbus to her. As social order broke down in the expedition -- a near certainty, once they were stranded -- Columbus would come to need a refuge. That would be Ankuash, and it would be her job to get him and any who came with him under control. If she had had to do a number on the Indies to get them to accept her, wait till they saw what she did to the white men.

Ah, Kemal. She had prepared the ground for him by saying that a person of power might come, a silent man, who would do marvelous things but would keep to himself. Leave him alone, she said in all her telling of this tale. All this time, she had no idea whether he would come or not -- for all she knew, she had been the only one to succeed in reaching her destination. It was such a relief when word reached her that the Silent Man was living in the forest near the seashore. For several days she toyed with the idea of going to see him. He had to be even lonelier than she was, disconnected from her own time, from all the people she had loved. But it wouldn't do. When he succeeded in his work, he would be perceived by the Spanish as their enemy; she could not be linked with him, even in Indie legend, for soon enough all those stories would reach Spanish ears. So she let it be known that she wanted to know all about his movements -- and that she thought it would be wise to leave him alone. Her authority wasn't all-pervasive, but Sees-in-the-Dark was regarded with enough awe, even by far-off villagers who had never spoken with her, that her advice concerning this strange bearded man was taken seriously.

Someone clapped outside her house.

"Be welcome," she said.

The woven reed flap was lifted aside, and Chipa came in. She was a young girl, perhaps ten years old, but smart, and Diko had chosen her to be her messenger to Cristoforo.

"Estas pronta?" Diko asked her.

"Pronta mas estoy con miedo." I'm ready but I'm afraid.

Chipa's Spanish was solid. Diko had taught her for two years now -- the two of them never spoke any other language between each other anymore. And of course Chipa was already fluent in the Taino language that was the lingua franca on Haiti, even though the villagers of Ankuash often spoke a different and much older language among each other, especially on solemn or sacred occasions. Language came easily to Chipa. She would do well as an interpreter.

Interpretation was the one thing that Cristoforo had never had on his first voyage. What could be communicated by hand signs and pointing and facial expressions wasn't much. The lack of a common language had forced both the Indies and the Europeans to depend on guesswork about what the other side really meant. It made for ludicrous misunderstandings. Any syllable that sounded like khan sent Cristoforo chasing after Cathay. And at this moment, in Guacanagari's main village, Cristoforo was no doubt asking where more gold could be found; when Guacanagari pointed up the mountain and said Obao, Cristoforo would hear it as a version of Opangu. If it really had been Cipangu, the samurai would have made short work of him and his men. But the most disturbing thing was that in the prior history it never crossed Cristoforo's mind that he didn't have the right to go straight to any gold mine he might find on Haiti and take possession of it.

She remembered what Cristoforo wrote in his log when Guacanagari's people worked long and hard to help him load all his equipment and supplies off the wrecked Santa Maria: "They love their neighbor as themselves." He was capable of thinking of them as having exemplary Christian virtues -- and then turn right around and assume that he had the right to take from them anything they owned. Gold mines, food, even their freedom and their lives -- he was incapable of thinking of them as having rights. After all, they were strangers. Dark of skin. Unable to speak any recognizable language. And therefore not people.

It was one of the hardest things for novices in Pastwatch to get used to, in studying the past -- the way that most people in most times were able to speak to people of other nations, treat with them, make promises to them, and then go off and act as if those very people were beasts. What were promises made to beasts? What respect did you owe to property claimed by animals? But Diko had learned, as most did in Pastwatch, that for most of human history, the virtue of empathy was confined to one's kinship group or tribe.

People who were not members of the tribe were not people. Instead they were animals -- either dangerous predators, useful prey, or beasts of burden. It was only now and then that a few great prophets declared people of other tribes, even of other languages or races, to be human. Guest- and host-rights gradually evolved. Even in modern times, when such attractive notions as the fundamental equality and fraternity of humankind were preached in every corner of the world, the idea that the stranger is not a person still remained just under the surface.

What am I expecting of Cristoforo, really? Diko wondered. I am asking him to learn a degree of empathy for other races that would not become a serious force in human life until nearly five hundred years after his great voyage, and did not prevail worldwide until many bloody wars and famines and plagues after that. I am asking him to rise out of his own time and become something new.

And this girl, Chipa, will be his first lesson and his ftrst test. How will he treat her? Will he even listen to her?

"You are right to be afraid," said Diko in Spanish. "The white men are dangerous and treacherous. Their promises mean nothing. If you don't want to go, I won't compel you."

"But why else did I learn Spanish?" she asked.

"So you and I could tell secrets." Diko grinned at her.

"I'll go," said Chipa. "I want to see them."

Diko nodded, accepting her decision. Chipa was too young and ignorant to understand the real danger that the Spanish would mistreat her; but then, most adults made most of their decisions without a clear understanding of the possible consequences. And Chipa. was both clever and good-hearted-the combination would probably serve her well enough.

An hour later, Chipa was out in the center of the village, plucking at the woven-grass shift that Diko had made for her. "It feels awful," said Chipa in Taino. "Why should I wear such a thing?"

"Because in the white men's country, it is a shameful thing for people to be naked."

Everybody laughed. "Why? Are they so ugly?"

"It's very cold there sometimes," said Diko, "but even in the summer they keep their bodies covered. Their God commanded them to wear things like this."

"It's better to sacrifice blood to the gods a few times a year, as the Taino do," said Baiku, "than for everybody to have to wear such ugly small houses on their bodies all the time."

"They say," said the boy Goala, "that the white men wear shells like a turtle."

"Those shells are strong, and spears don't go through them very easily," said Diko.

The villagers fell silent then, thinking about what this might mean if it ever came to battle.

"Why are you sending Chipa to these turtle men?" asked Nugkui.

"These turtle men are dangerous, but they're also powerful, and some of them have good hearts if we can only teach them how to be human. Chipa will bring the white men here, and when they're ready to learn from me, I'll teach them. And the rest of you will teach them, too."

"What can we teach to men who can build canoes as big as a hundred of ours?" asked Nugkui.

"They'll teach us, too. But not until they're ready."

Nugkui still looked skeptical.

"Nugkui," said Diko, "I know what you're thinking."

He waited to hear what she would say.

"You don't want me to send Chipa as a gift to Guacanagari, because then he'll think that this means he rules over Ankuash."

Nugkui shrugged. "He already thinks that. But why should I make him sure?"

"Because he'll have to give Chipa to the white men. And once she's with them, she'll serve Ankuash."

"She'll serve Sees-in-the-Dark, you mean." It was a man's voice, from behind her.

"Your name may be Yacha," she said without turning around, "but you are not always wise, my cousin. But if I'm not a part of Ankuash, tell me now, and I'll go to another village and let them become the teachers of the white men."

The uproar among the villagers was immediate. A few moments later, Baiku and Putukam were leading Chipa down the mountain, out of Ankuash, out of Ciboa, to begin her moment of peril and greatness.

Kemal swam under the hull of the Nina. He had more than two hours' breathing mixture left in the tanks, which was five times longer than he would need, if everything went as he had practiced it. It took a little longer than he had expected to chip away the barnacles from a strip of hull near the waterline -- you couldn't build up much momentum wielding a chisel under water. But the job was done soon enough, and then from his belly pouch he drew out the array of shaped incendiaries. He put the heating surface of each one against the hull, and then tripped the automatic self-driving staples that would hold them tight to the wood. When they were all in place, he pulled the cord at the end. At once he could feel the water growing warmer. Despite being shaped to put most of their energy into the wood, they still gave off enough heat into the water that before long it would be boiling. Kemal swam quickly away, back toward his boat.

In five minutes, the wood inside the hull burst into fierce flames. And still the heat from the incendiaries continued, helping the fire to spread rapidly.

The Spanish would have no idea how a fire could have started in the bilge. Long before they could get near the Nina again, the wood that the incendiaries were attached to would be ash, and the metal shells of the charges would drop to the bottom of the sea. They would give off a faint sonar pulse for several days, allowing Kemal to swim back and retrieve them later. The Spanish would have no idea that the burning of the Nina was anything but a terrible accident. Nor would anyone else who searched the site of the wreck in future centuries.

Now everything depended on whether Pinzўn remained true to character and brought the Pinta back to Haiti. If he did, Kemal would blow the last caravel to bits. There would be no way to believe it an accident. Everyone would look at the ship and say, An enemy has done this.