"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 p.e.n.i.s 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 ma.s.sive 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 p.e.n.i.s 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 G.o.ds 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 gra.s.s. "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 p.e.n.i.s. 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 c.i.p.angu? Possibly. But it was discouraging to have to keep a.s.suring the sailors and, above all, the royal functionaries that untold wealth was just a few more days' sailing away.

When would G.o.d 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 G.o.d had led him to. And it was obvious that these savages were completely unfit to be made into soldiers in a Crusade.

If G.o.d 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 offsh.o.r.e 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 G.o.d's remonstrance against his insubordinate complaining. Maybe G.o.d 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 c.i.p.angu 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 sh.o.r.e.

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 sh.o.r.e 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 rea.s.suring 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. Pinzn had taken the Pinta away from the rest of the fleet, just as in the former history. But now who could guess whether Pinzn 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.e and waited for history to repeat itself.

Or perhaps not. Columbus would be anxious to sail east in order to beat Pinzn back to Spain, and this time he might go out around Tortuga, tacking into the trade winds and completely avoiding the treacherous sh.o.r.e 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 Pinzn 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 Pinzn 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 Pinzn's perfidy - it would be Pinzn who would reap the first fame, Pinzn whose name would live through history as the man who returned first to Europe from the westward route to the Orient.

Pinzn had never sailed far enough south to know that this steady east wind gave way, in lower lat.i.tudes, 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 Pinzn, who would no doubt be tacking his way across the Atlantic, a slow proposition at best. There was a good chance that Pinzn'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 Pinzn's disloyalty had provoked. Worst of all, there was no one in whom he could confide, for the men were doubtless all rooting for Pinzn 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 Pinzn to arrive first in Spain.