Hester frowned at Ensign Benson. “What’s he mean, ‘madam’?”
“It’s a local term for engineer,” Ensign Benson said.
Meanwhile, at the ship, Luthguster was making a farewell speech to the chief tout and the assembled Casino people: “And I think that when your chief tout promulgates the various treaties and agreements we reached in this most fruitful visit, you will all agree that Earth has been more than fair. More than fair.”
Under the speech, Ensign Benson went to Billy to say, “I finally figured out that bird shoot. Thanks.”
“Oh, you’re welcome. But the great part,” Billy said, “was how lucky you were, hand after hand.”
“That wasn’t luck. It was Pam.”
“It was?”
“God meant that girl, Billy, to be one of the great pieces of all time, but something went wrong somewhere, and she took the path of mathematics instead. She and her slide rule add up to one genius. It took her twenty minutes to figure out the odds in koppel; from then on, she gave me signals on my shoulder, and I knew the precise odds at every step of play. Ultimately, I couldn’t lose.”
“Unless somebody cheated,” Billy said.
“Which is where you came in. Thanks again.”
Luthguster at last was scaling the heights of his peroration: “I have been delighted,” he announced, “to be the individual who brought you this tremendous news and effected this magnificent reconciliation. And now we must bid you a fond farewell.”
“Tell them where you got it,” the chief tout said, “and how easy it was.”
As the Earth people started up the ladder, Hester’s hammer clanged inadvertently off the metal rail. “Careful with my ship,” Ensign Benson said.
The Earth people entered Ensign Benson’s ship. The ladder retracted and the door closed. Soon a great, powerful humming was heard. “Even money it blows up,” said a citizen.
“I’ll take that,” Scanney said.
Dream a Dream
Stirred by a bizarre nightmare, Nora awakens to a surprisingly passionate reality…
“I’m dreaming, Nora thought, and she was right, but it didn’t matter.
The dream was very realistic, even to the glitter on the knife in the hand of the tall Mayan priest. He faced Nora in a small chamber she knew to be at the base of the temple, and even while her attention was on the stone knife she was aware of the rightness of every detail, both in his costume and the room itself, a narrow stone-walled space with a dry-smelling thatch roof. Stylized hummingbirds and vultures flowed on the priest’s robes as he gestured, saying, “Well? Are you ready?”
Of course he isn’t speaking English, and of course I understand him. “Ready for what?”
“After the rains,” the priest said, “we must sacrifice a virgin to ensure fertility in the new fields.”
Astonished, almost offended, not yet scared, Nora said, “I’m not a virgin!”
His free hand extended toward her, “Come, you keep everybody waiting.”
A great crowd could be faintly heard outside. Nora shrank away, feeling the rough wall against her back through the thin white cotton tunic. “I’m a married woman,” she said. Safe in that other world, beyond the edge of the dream, Ray was now asleep in the cot next to hers, the two of them peaceful and at rest in the Central American night. “I’m twenty-seven years old,” Nora said. “I’ve been married nearly three years. I am not a virgin!”
“Of course you are.” His impatience made him draw quick cutting motions in the air with the blade. “There is no passion in your life,” he said, “—not for anything with juice in it. You married your husband not for love of him but of archaeology,” the word dripping with contempt. “You’ve never loved anything but dust. You’re a virgin, no question. Come along.” Eyes determined, his wiry hand closed around her arm.
“No!” She sat up straight in the dark, disturbing the mosquitoes, staring at the night. On the other cot, Ray turned heavily in his sleep, smacking his lips, a fiftyish man who slept profoundly after the hard physical days in the field.
“I’m not,” she whispered. The pressure of that bony hand could still be felt, a tight band around her upper arm. The glassless screened rectangle of the window let in air and the tiny night sounds of the jungle. Nora slowly lay back, hands holding the sheet under her chin, eyes very wide in the dark.
During breakfast, at one of the long tables in the dining shed, Nora pensively picked at her eggs and beans while Ray talked with the oil company man.
His name was Stafford, and he had come to this remote jungle camp five days ago for a stay of about a month. By day he wandered the high land to the west, and in the evenings after dinner he sat here in the dining shed in the circle of light, where he drew his tiny maps and made notes in a small, neat hand. Now he was saying something about tall mounds he had seen in the jungle, similar to those concealing the structures here in the main pan of Actun Ek, the Mayan city whose excavation Ray was directing. “Thanks, Bill,” Ray said. “We’ll have a look.”
Nora was relieved when breakfast was done and they could tramp on out to the site, where the workers already crawled over the high-stepped sides of Building B-l, the primary temple of Actun Elk. I was here last night, Nora thought.
The workers, Indian tribesmen who made their living from archaeological sites, had nearly finished the first task, clearing away the centuries of growth and decay, the earth and brush and trees that covered the cunningly nested old stones, the steep lines of stairs. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, Mayan temples were built solid, without rooms or corridors, just the steps and walls and sculptures reaching upward. Only at the base had there originally been the small thatch-roofed rooms built out from the temple’s side.
Nora and Ray worked behind the Indians, collecting shards, filling in site maps. This was Nora’s third year at Actun Ek, her eighth year since she had fallen in love with the dignity, strength, and confidence of the Mayan civilization, the impervious mystery of their individual persons. Who had they been? When they awoke in the morning, what had they thought of themselves and the jungle around them and the high temples to which they devoted their lives?
Human sacrifice: yes, that was part of it but hardly everything. Something was known of their agriculture, their trade, their religion, even their sports, but never very much. Never enough to hamper Nora’s imagination.
Every day, in her mind, as she gleaned her way across the uneven steps, Nora was a Mayan priestess. Not even Ray knew of this game, this fantasy she had lived and elaborated for eight years. She imagined her clothing, her food, the understated drama of her days. Little was known of the place of women among the Mayan upper class, so her invention could float unimpeded.
At dinner, Bill Stafford showed them, on his neat maps, the location of the mounds he’d seen. This earnest geologist seemed even younger than Nora, which from the beginning had pleased her. She’d married a man much older than herself, was mostly around people of his generation, and resented their usual assumption that she was too young to be serious. Stafford was barely out of engineering college, but there could be no doubt of his seriousness. He had a square-jawed, handsome face, softened by a faint vagueness of expression. His eyeglasses were square-lensed, with plastic frames just a bit darker than his tanned skin. His hair was blond but already very thin, sunlight reflecting from his scalp through his widow’s peak. He wore hiking shoes, khaki slacks, a short-sleeved white dress shirt; in a white hard-plastic pouch in the shin pocket, his pens and pencils were neatly arrayed. He shaved every day.