The soldier was on the hump-backed bridge. “Compliments of Colonel Noordhof, folks,” he said in a Brooklyn accent. “He would like you to join him for a light snack. Gee it stinks in here.” The soldier took them briskly back up the hill, in a straight line which shaved swimming pools and ploughed through flower beds as necessary.
They met up in the big restaurant, all wood and tall ceilings with an enormous empty fireplace. Aztec descendants wore white jackets and hovered around with impassive expressions. Their calmness mystified Webb. Either they believed their government’s reassurances about Nemesis or they were indifferent to vaporization; neither seemed likely. Judy had reappeared in a short denim skirt, white cotton top and walking boots. She wore long dangling silver earrings and was carrying a canvas shoulder bag. After the frantic exit from Mexico City, Noordhof seemed in a good humour, and if the astronomer’s nerves had been less taut he would have missed the occasional appraising glance in his direction. The soldier kept cracking jokes about Jane Fonda; from their content, Webb assumed they had a military circulation. They had enchiladas stuffed with chicken and a sauce with little jalapeño peppers in it, and candied sweet potatoes for a side dish. Two dishes of sauce, one red and one green, were placed in front of Webb.
“The waiters use this as a test of virility,” Noordhof explained. “The green sauce is for ladies and wimps. The red one is for real men.”
“I don’t hold with these stunted concepts of masculinity,” Webb declared. He dipped a thin slice of a turnip-like vegetable into the green sauce, nibbled it, turned red, spluttered and then tried to swallow the Orinoco River. The Aztecs smiled their approval.
“Or was it the other way round?” Noordhof wondered.
They finished off with a dessert of baked bananas with egg whites and sweet condensed milk poured over them, washing it down with coffee spiced with vanilla and cloves, poured over cream and crushed ice.
Finally, Noordhof looked at his watch and said, “You want to check out the setup at ground zero, Doc?”
“What about my siesta?” Webb asked, bloated.
They heaved themselves up the wooden steps of the hacienda. The jeep was waiting at the front door. Judy and Webb sat in the back. Bullet Head revved the engine and they took off smartly down the hill and out of the complex, driving towards the sun, and the hinterlands.
The road was narrow and dusty. A few family homes, little more than corrugated iron huts with three walls, were scattered around the fields, with scraggy children playing happily enough, or heaving buckets of water. The soil was thin and stony, and broken up by outcrops of rock. Eventually, even the houses petered out, and the cacti took over, tall, emaciated giants standing like motionless Triffids. Buzzards were gliding in big lazy circles high in the mountains. Sacheverell’s scenario again; but it hadn’t described the hot, humid air which streamed past the army jeep. Webb’s shirt was sticky with sweat. Metal was painful to touch. Judy wore dark sunglasses and her vaquero hat. Ahead of them, low on the horizon to the south, dark clouds were building up.
As they drove steadily south, towards the dark horizon, the temperature rose inexorably. For a mile behind them, a long billowing wake of dust marked out their trail. Webb’s throat turned into a hot, desiccated tube, and he felt his face going the colour of beetroot. Noordhof’s conversation began to wilt, and then died, and they headed out, into the deserted inferno, in a mood of grim endurance. Still jetlagged, Webb tried to stretch out, laying his head back on the seat.
There was a blonde, Nordic maiden. Her eyes were glacier-blue and she was wearing a white gown. She was up to her waist in a pool of turquoise meltwater which cascaded down from Buachaille Etive Mor, spraying them both. She smiled enigmatically, and waded forwards carrying an icefilled tumbler of Coke on a silver tray. She held the tray out to Webb. He stretched out for the cold drink, but there was the sudden roar of an avalanche, and a rock struck him on the head, and there was a crash of gears and a heavy lurch, and the ice maiden was gone, and a pitiless sun was burning into his eyes. The jeep was slowing, the driver turning off the road. They started to bump and grind along a little donkey track. The track snaked its way upwards through foothills, weaving its way around boulders. The soldier worked hard on the wheel, cursing and begging your pardon ma’am, while the jeep’s suspension squealed in complaint. Ahead of them was a wooden hut, an anomaly in these primordial surroundings, like a telephone booth on a mountain top. The jeep reached it and stopped with a groan. A red-faced soldier emerged hastily and came to attention. His shirt was sticky with sweat.
Noordhof stepped out of the jeep and stretched himself. His brow was damp with sweat. He grinned wolfishly. “That was the easy bit. Epicentre dead ahead. From here on in we walk.” He returned the soldier’s salute smartly, and led the group off in single file.
The air was even hotter, and it was scented. As they climbed up, they were surrounded by the drone and clicking of a billion invisible insects. Irrationally, Webb began to feel hemmed in, overwhelmed. We are the true rulers of the Earth, they were saying; you are the temporary guests; we were here a billion years before you, will be here a billion years after you have gone.
They scrambled upwards over boulder-strewn ground in grim silence. Once a twin-rotor helicopter passed, thundering overhead, a jeep swinging below it on a long cable. It disappeared over the horizon ahead and the insects returned. After half an hour of it, the ground began to level out and they began to see signs of ancient cultivation. The path was taking them through terracing. There was a hilltop ahead and as they approached it, structures began to appear in silhouette against the sky. Reaching the summit, they found themselves looking out over a small city. Some community long gone had levelled the ground. Stone pyramids, temples and walls were everywhere. Hundreds of camouflage-green tents were laid out about half a mile to the right, and the city was swarming with soldiers.
Noordhof waved an arm around. “Ground zero. The place of decision.”
“My feet are killing me,” Webb said.
“I have to see the boss,” said Noordhof, leaving them; he had slipped into a brisk, military style, marching rather than strolling. Judy and Webb had simultaneously spotted a van with an open side and an awning. The woman who handed out tumblers of iced Coke was middle-aged, wrinkled and wore a shapeless khaki overall, but to Webb she was the Ice Maiden of his dream. They downed two each in quick succession and Webb thought that maybe there was a God after all.
A GI sidled up. He looked about sixteen. He was small, freckled and had ginger hair cut almost to the scalp. “You the Brit?”
Webb nodded.
The soldier licked his lips nervously. “Say, this asteroid thing — the line is it’s going to miss. Or we wouldn’t be here, right?”
“Right,” Webb said reassuringly.
The young soldier wasn’t reassured. “You can give it to me straight, sir. We really are okay?”
A tall, thin bespectacled sergeant approached. “Are you in pain, Briggs?”
“No, sarge.”
“That’s strange, because I’m standing on your hair. Get it cut.”
The soldier hurried off. “Say, can I show y’all around?” the sergeant asked, nominally nodding in Webb’s direction before fixing a grin on Judy. Webb wandered off with a wave.
There were bas-relief carvings around the sides of the squat, stony buildings: armed warriors, human sacrifices, arms and legs and dismembered trunks. Waiting for the skygod. On one side of a truncated pyramid Webb recognized a stylized cosmic serpent, winged and feathered, the ancient symbol of catastrophic skies from the Norse lands to Sri Lanka, from China to Mexico: the ancient giant comet, father of a hundred Karibishas.