Whether because of his near death in the ocean or because G.o.d wished him to have a more distinguished appearance, Columbus found his red hair rapidly turning white. Since he was still youthful in the face and vigorous in the body, the whitening hair turned many heads his way. Whenever he wasn't voyaging on business, attempting to make headway in a trade that was always tilted in favor of the native Portuguese, he made it a point to attend All Saints' Church, where the marriageable ladies of families not rich enough to have their own household priest in attendance were brought forth, heavily supervised, to hear ma.s.s, take communion, and make confession.

It was there that he saw Felipa, or rather made sure that she saw him. He had made discreet inquiries about several young ladies, and learned much that was promising about her. Her father, Governor Perestrello, had been a man of some distinction and influence, with a tenuous claim on n.o.bility that no one contested during his lifetime because he had been one of the young seafarers trained by Prince Henry the Navigator and had taken part with distinction in the conquest of Madeira. As a reward, he had been made governor of the small island of Porto Santo, a nearly waterless place of little value except for the prestige it gave him back in Lisbon. Now he was dead, but he was not forgotten, and the man who married his daughter would be able to meet seafarers and make contacts in court that could eventually bring him before the king.

Felipa's brother was still governor of the island, and Felipa's mother, Dona Moniz, ruled over the family - including the brother - with an iron hand. It was she, not Felipa, whom Columbus had to impress; but first he had to catch Felipa's eye. It was not hard to do. The story of Columbus's long swim to sh.o.r.e after the famous battle between the Genovese merchant fleet and the French pirate Coullon was often told. Columbus made it a point to deny any heroism. "All I did was throw pots and set ships afire, including my own. Braver and better men than I fought and died. And then ... I swam. If the sharks had thought I looked appetizing I wouldn't be here. Is this a hero?" But such self-deprecation in a society much given to boasting was exactly the pose that he knew he had to take. People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue - this is what will endear him to the locals.

It worked well enough. Felipa had heard of him, and in church he caught her looking at him and bowed. She blushed and turned away. A rather homely girl. Her father was a warrior and her mother was built like a fortress - the daughter had her father's fierceness and her mother's formidable thickness. Yet there was a glint of grace and humor in her smile when she glanced back at him, once the obligatory blush had pa.s.sed. She knew it was a game they were playing, and she didn't mind. After all, she was not a prime prospect, and if the man who wooed her was an ambitious Genovese who wanted to use her family connections, how was that different from the daughters of more fortunate families who were wooed by ambitious lords who wanted to use their families' wealth? A woman of rank could hardly expect to be married for her own virtues - those had only a minor effect on the asking price, as long as she was a virgin, and that family a.s.set, at least, had been well protected.

Glances in church led to a call on the Perestrello household, where Dona Moniz received him five times before agreeing to let him meet Felipa, and then only after the marriage was all but agreed upon. It was established that Columbus would have to give up openly practicing a trade - his voyages could no longer be so obviously commercial, and his brother Bartholomew, who had joined him from Genova, would become the proprietor of the chart shop that Columbus had started. Columbus would merely be a gentleman who occasionally stopped by to advise his tradesman brother. This suited both Columbus and Bartholomew.

At last Columbus met Felipa, and not long afterward they were married. Dona Moniz knew perfectly well what this Genovese adventurer was after, or thought she did, and she was quite certain that no sooner would he have gained entree into courtly society than he would immediately begin to establish liaisons with prettier - and richer - mistresses, angling for ever more advantageous connections in court. She had seen his type a thousand times before, and she saw through him. So, just before the wedding, she surprised everyone by announcing that her son, the governor of Porto Santo, had invited Felipa and her new husband to come live with him on the island. And Dona Moniz herself would of course come with them, since there was no reason for her to stay in Lisbon when her dear daughter Felipa and her precious son the governor - her whole family, and never mind the other married daughters - were hundreds of miles away out in the Atlantic Ocean. Besides, the Madeira Islands had a warmer and more healthful climate.

Felipa thought it was a wonderful idea, of course - she had always loved the island - but to Dona Moniz's surprise, Columbus also accepted the invitation with enthusiasm. He managed to hide his amus.e.m.e.nt at her obvious discomfiture. If he wanted to go, then there must be something wrong with the plan - he knew that was how she was thinking. But that was because she had no notion of what mattered to him. He was in the service of G.o.d, and while eventually he would have to present himself in court to win approval for a westward voyage, it would be years before he was prepared to make his case. He needed experience; he needed charts and books; he needed time to think and plan. Poor Dona Moniz - she didn't realize that Porto Santo put him directly on the sailing route of the Portuguese expeditions along the African coast. They all put in at Madeira, and there Columbus would be able to learn much about how to lead expeditions, how to chart unknown territories, how to navigate long distances in unknown seas. Old Perestrello, Felipa's late father, had kept a small but valuable library at Porto Santo, and Columbus would have access to it. Thus, if he could learn some of the Portuguese skills in navigation, if G.o.d led him to hidden information in his studies of the old writings, he might learn something encouraging about his coming voyage to the west.

The voyage was brutal for Felipa. She had never been seasick before, and by the time they arrived at Porto Santo, Dona Moniz was sure that she and Columbus had already conceived a child. Sure enough, nine months later Diego was born. Felipa took a long time recovering from the pregnancy and birth, but as soon as she was strong enough she devoted herself to the child. Her mother viewed this with some distaste, since there were nurses for that kind of thing, but she could hardly complain, for it soon became obvious that Diego was all that Felipa had; her husband did not seem hungry for her company. Indeed, he seemed eager to get off the island at every opportunity - but not for the sake of getting to court. Instead, he kept begging for chances to get onto a ship sailing along the African coast.

The more he begged, the less likely it seemed that he would get a chance to join a voyage. He was, after all, Genovese, and it occurred to more than one ship's captain that Columbus might have married into a sailing family as a ploy to learn the African coast and then return to Genova and bring Italian ships into compet.i.tion with the Portuguese. That would be intolerable, of course. So there was never a question of Columbus getting what he really wanted.

With her husband so frustrated, Felipa began to pressure her mother to do something for her Cristovao. He loves the sea, Felipa said. He dreams of great voyages. Can't you do something for him?

So she brought her son-in-law into her late husband's library and opened for him the boxes of charts and maps, the cases of precious books. Columbus's grat.i.tude was palpable. For the first time it occurred to her that perhaps he was sincere - that he had little interest in the African coast, that it was navigation that inspired him, voyaging for its own sake that he longed for.

Columbus began to spend almost every waking moment poring over the books and charts. Of course there were no charts for the western ocean, for no one who had sailed beyond the Azores or the Canaries or the Cape Verde Islands ever returned. Columbus learned, though, that the Portuguese voyagers had disdained to hug the coast of Africa. Instead, they sailed far out to sea, using better winds and deeper waters until their instruments told them that they had sailed as far south as the last voyage had reached. Then they would sail landward, eastward, hoping that this time they were farther south than the southernmost tip of Africa, that they would find a route leading eastward to India. It was that deep-sea sailing that had first brought Portuguese sailors to Madeira and then to the Cape Verde Islands. Some adventurers of the time had imagined that there might be chains of islands stretching farther to the west, and had sailed to see, but such voyages always ended in either disappointment or tragedy, and no one believed anymore that there were more islands to the west or south.

But Columbus could not disregard the records of old rumors that once had led sailors to search for westward islands. He devoured the rumors of a dead sailor washed ash.o.r.e in the Azores or Canaries or Cape Verdes, a waterlogged chart tucked into his clothing showing western islands reached before his ship sank, the stories of floating logs from unknown species of tree, of flocks of land birds far away to the south or west, of corpses of drowned men with rounder faces than any seen in Europe, dark and yet not as black of skin as Africans, either. These all dated from an earlier time, and Columbus knew they represented the wishful thinking of a brief era. But he knew what none of them could know - that G.o.d intended Columbus to reach the great kingdoms of the east by sailing west, which meant that perhaps these rumors were not all wishful thinking, that perhaps they were true.

Even if they were, however, they would be unconvincing to those who would decide whether to fund a westward expedition. To persuade the king would mean ftrst persuading the learned men of his court, and that would require serious evidence, not sailors' lore. For that purpose the real treasure of Porto Santo were the books, for Perestrello had loved the study of geography, and he had Latin translations of Ptolemy.

Ptolemy was cold comfort for Columbus - he had it that from the westernmost tip of Europe to the easternmost tip of Asia was 180 degrees, half the circ.u.mference of the earth. Such a voyage over open ocean would be hopeless. No ship could carry enough supplies or keep them fresh long enough to cover even a quarter of that distance.

Yet G.o.d had told him that he could reach the Orient by sailing west. Therefore Ptolemy must be wrong, and not just slightly wrong, either. He must be drastically, hopelessly wrong. And Columbus had to find a way to prove it, so that a king would allow him to lead ships to the west to fulfill the will of G.o.d.

It would be simpler, he said in his silent prayers to the Holy Trinity, if you sent an angel to tell the King of Portugal. Why did you choose me? No one will listen to me.

But G.o.d didn't answer him, and so Columbus continued to think and study and try to figure out how to prove what he knew must be true and yet no one had ever guessed - that the world was much, much smaller, the west and east much closer together than any of the ancients had ever believed. And since the only authorities that the scholars would accept were the books written by the ancients, Columbus would have to ftnd, somewhere, ancient writers who had discovered what Columbus knew had to be the truth about the world's size. He found some useful ideas in Cardinal d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, a compendium of the works of ancient writers, where he learned that Marinus of Tyre had estimated that the great landma.s.s of the world was not 180 degrees, but 225, leaving the ocean to take up only 135 degrees. That was still much too far, but it was promising. Never mind that Ptolemy lived and wrote after Marinus of Tyre, that he had examined Marinus's figures and refuted them. Marinus offered a picture of the world that helped build Columbus's case for sailing west, and so Marinus was the better authority. There were also helpful references from Aristotle, Seneca, and Pliny.

Then he realized that these ancient writers had been unaware of Marco Polo's discoveries on his journey to Cathay. Add 28 degrees of land for his findings, and then add another 30 degrees to account for the distance between Cathay and the island nation of c.i.p.angu, and there were only 77 degrees of ocean left to cross. Then subtract another 9 degrees by starting his own voyage in the Canaries, the southwestern islands that seemed the likeliest jumpingoff point for the sort of voyage G.o.d had commanded, and now Columbus's fleet would only have to cross 68 degrees of ocean.

It was still too far. But surely there were errors in Marco Polo's account, in the calculations of the ancients. Take off another 8 degrees, round it down to a mere 60! Yet it was still impossibly far. One-sixth of the Earth's circ.u.mference between the Canaries and c.i.p.angu, and yet that still meant a voyage of more than 3,000 miles without a port of call. Bend or twist them as he might, Columbus couldn't make the writings of the ancients support what he knew to be true: that it was a matter of days or at most weeks to sail from Europe to the great kingdoms of the east. There had to be more information. Another writer, perhaps. Or some fact that he had overlooked. Something that would persuade the scholars of Lisbon to respect his request and recommend to King Jodo that he give Columbus command of an expedition.

Through all of this, Felipa was obviously baffled and frustrated. Columbus was vaguely aware that she wanted more of his time and thought, but he couldn't concentrate on the silly things that interested her, not when G.o.d had set such a Herculean labor for him to accomplish. He hadn't married her to play at housekeeping, and he said so. He had great works to accomplish. But he couldn't explain what that great work was, or who had given it to him to accomplish, because he had been forbidden to tell. So he watched Felipa grow more and more hurt even as he grew more and more impatient with her obvious hunger for his company.

Felipa had been warned countless times that men were demanding and unfaithful, and she was prepared for that. But what was wrong with her husband? She was the only lady available to him, and Diego should have a brother or sister, but Columbus hardly seemed to want her. "He cares for nothing but charts and maps and old books," she complained to her mother. "That and meeting pilots and navigators and men who have ever had or might someday have the ear of the king."

At first Dona Moniz counseled her to be patient, that the insatiable l.u.s.ts of men would eventually conquer Columbus's seeming indifference. But when that did not happen, she eventually gave her consent for them to move from isolated Porto Santo to a house the family owned on Funchal, the largest city on the main island of the Madeiras. The theory was that if Columbus could satisfy more of his hunger for the sea, he might, in his satisfaction, turn to Felipa.

Instead he turned even more devotedly to the sea, until he became one of the best-known men in the port of Funchal. No ship came into port without Columbus soon finding his way aboard, befriending captains and navigators, noticing the amounts of supplies taken aboard and how long they were expected to last, noticing, in fact, everything.

"If he's a spy," said one ship's captain to Dona Moniz, the widow of his old friend Perestrello, "then he's a clumsy one indeed, since he gathers his information so openly, so eagerly. I think he simply loves the sea and wishes he had been born Portuguese so he could join with the great expeditions."

"But he wasn't, and so he can't," said Dona Moniz. "Why can't he be content? He has a good life with my daughter, or he would have, if he simply paid attention to her."

The old fellow merely laughed. "When a man gets the sea in his blood, what does a woman have to offer him? What is a child? The wind is his woman, the birds his children. Why do you keep him here on these islands? He is surrounded by the sea all the time, and yet can't sail free. He's Genovese, and so he won't get to sail into the new African waters. But why not let him - no, help him - join with merchant voyages to other places."

"I see that you actually like this white-haired man who makes my daughter feel like a widow. "

"A widow? Perhaps a half-widow. For there are three types of men in the world - the living, the dead, and sailors. You should remember. Your husband was one of us."

"But he gave up the sea and stayed home."

"And died," said the gentleman, with brutal candor. "Your Felipa has a son, hasn't she? So now let her husband go out and earn the fortune that he will pa.s.s on to that grandson of yours someday. It's plain that you're killing him by keeping him here."

So it was that two years after coming to the Madeira Islands, Dona Moniz at last suggested that it was time for them to return to Lisbon. Columbus packed up his father-in-law's books and charts and eagerly prepared for the voyage. Yet he knew even as he did so that for Felipa there was far less hope. The voyage to Porto Santo had been a dreadful one for her, even filled with hope in her new marriage as she was at the time. Now she would not be pregnant - but she had also despaired of finding happiness with Columbus. What made it all the more unbearable was that the more aloof he became, the more hopelessly she loved him. She could hear him speaking to other men and his voice, his pa.s.sion, his manner were captivating; she watched him poring over books that she could barely understand and she marveled at the brilliance of his mind. He wrote in the margins of the books - he dared to add his words to the words of the ancients! He dwelt in a world that she could never enter, and yet she longed to. Take me with you into these strange places, she said to him silently. But the silence with which he answered her was not filled with longing, or if it was, his longings did not include her or little Diego. So she knew that the voyage back to Lisbon would not bring her closer to her husband, or farther. She would never touch him, not really. She had his child, but the more she hungered for the man himself, the more she reached out to him, the more he would push her away; and yet if she did not reach out, he would ignore her completely; there was no path she could see that would lead her to happiness.

Columbus saw this in her. He was not as blind to her needs as she supposed. He simply had no time to make her happy. If she could have been content to share his bed and let him be with her whenever he was weary of his study, then he might have been able to give her something. But she demanded so much more: that he be interested in - no, delighted about - every clever childish thing that the incomprehensible Diego did! That he care about the gossip of women, that he admire her needlework, that he care what fabrics she had chosen for her new gown, that he intervene with a servant who was being lazy and impertinent. He knew that if he took interest in these things it would make her happy - but it would also encourage her to bring even more of this kind of nonsense to distract him, and he simply had no time for it. So he turned away, not wishing to hurt her and yet hurting her all the same, because he had to find a way to accomplish what G.o.d had given him to do.

During the voyage back to Portugal, Felipa was not so terribly seasick, but she nevertheless stayed in her bed, bleakly staring at the walls of her tiny cabin. And from this sickness of heart she would never recover. Even in Lisbon, where Dona Moniz hoped that her old friends would cheer her up, Felipa only rarely consented to go out. Instead she devoted herself to little Diego and spent the rest of her time haunting her own house. When Columbus was away on a voyage or on business in the city, she wandered about as if searching for him; when he was there, she would spend days working up the courage to try to engage him in conversation. Whether he politely listened or curtly asked her to let him alone so he could concentrate on his work, the end was the same. She went to her bed and wept, for she was not part of his life at all, and she knew no way to enter it, and so she loved him all the more desperately, and knew all the more surely that it was some failing in her that made her unlovable to her husband.

The worst agony was when he brought her along to some musical performance or to ma.s.s or to dine at court, for she knew that the only reason he was accepted among the aristocrats of Lisbon was because he was married to her, and so he needed her on these occasions and they both had to act as though they were husband and wife, and all the while she could barely keep herself from bursting into tears and screaming to everyone that her husband did not love her, that he slept with her perhaps once in a week, twice in a month, and that even that was without genuine affection. If she had ever allowed herself such an outburst, she might have been surprised at how surprised the other women would have been - not that she had such a relationship with her husband, but that she found anything wrong with it. It was very nearly the relationship that most of them had with their husbands. Women and men lived in separate worlds; they met only on the bed to produce heirs and on public occasions to enhance each other's status in the world. Why was she so upset about this? Why didn't she simply live as they did, a pleasant life of ease among other women, occasionally indulging their children and always relying upon servants to make things go easily?

The answer was, of course, that none of their husbands was Cristovao. None of them burned with his inner fire. None of them had such a deep gravity of pa.s.sion in his heart, drawing a woman ever closer, even though that deep well in him would drown her and never yield anything, never give off anything that might nourish her or slake her thirst for his love.

And Columbus, for his part, looked at Felipa as the years of marriage aged her, as her lips turned downward into a permanent frown, as she spent more and more of her time in bed with nameless illnesses, and he knew that he was somehow causing this, that he was harming her, and that there was nothing he could do about it, not if he was going to fulfil his mission in life.

Almost as soon as Columbus returned to Lisbon, he found the book that he was looking for. The geographic work of an Arab named Alfragano had been translated into Latin, and Columbus found in it the perfect tool to shrink those last 60 degrees to a reasonable voyaging distance. If Alfragano's calculations were a.s.sumed to be in Roman miles, then the 60 degrees of distance between the Canaries and c.i.p.angu would amount to as little as 2,000 nautical miles at the lat.i.tudes he would be sailing. With reasonably favorable winds, which G.o.d would surely provide for him, the voyage could be made in as few as eight days; two weeks at the most.

He had his proofs now in terms the scholars would understand. He wouldn't come before them with nothing but his own faith in a vision he couldn't tell them about. Now he had the ancients on his side, and never mind that one of them was a Muslim, he could still build a case for his expedition.

At last his marriage to Felipa paid off. He used every contact he had made, and won the chance to present his ideas at court. He stood boldly before King Joao, knowing that G.o.d would touch his heart and make him understand that it was G.o.d's will that he mount this expedition with Columbus at its head. He laid out his maps, with all his calculations, showing c.i.p.angu within easy reach, and Cathay but a short voyage beyond that. The scholars listened; the King listened. They asked questions. They mentioned the ancient authorities that contradicted Columbus's view of the size of the earth and the ratio of land to water, and Columbus answered them patiently and with confidence. This is the truth, he said. Until one of them said, "How do you know that Marinus is right and Ptolemy is wrong?"

Columbus answered, "Because if Ptolemy is right then this voyage would be impossible. But it is not impossible, it will succeed, and so I know that Ptolemy is wrong."

Even as he said it, he knew that it was not an answer that would persuade them. He knew, seeing their polite nods, their not-so-covert glances at the King, that their recommendation would be squarely against him. Well, he thought, I have done all I could. Now it is up to G.o.d. He thanked the King for his kindness, reaffirmed his certainty that this expedition would cover Portugal in glory and make it the greatest kingdom of Europe and bring Christianity to countless souls, and took his leave.

He took it as an encouraging sign that, as he waited for the King's answer, he was given permission to join a trading expedition to the African coast. It wasn't a voyage of exploration, so no great secrets of the Portuguese crown were being laid before him. Still, it was a sign of trust and favor that he was allowed to sail as far as the fortress of Sao Jorge at La Mina. The King is preparing me to lead an expedition by letting me become acquainted with the great achievements of Portuguese navigation.

Upon his return he eagerly awaited the King's answer, expecting to be told any day that he would be given the ships, the crew, the supplies that he needed.

The King said no.

Columbus was devastated. For days he hardly ate or slept. He did not know what to think. Wasn't this G.o.d's plan? Didn't G.o.d tell kings and princes what to do? How, then, could King Joao have refused him?

It was something I did wrong. I shouldn't have spent so much time trying to prove that the voyage was possible; I should have spent more time trying to help the King catch the vision of why the voyage was desirable, necessary. Why G.o.d wanted this to be achieved. I acted foolishly. I prepared insufficiently. I was unworthy. All the explanations he could think of left him spiraling downward into despair.

Felipa saw her husband suffering and she knew that in the one thing that she had ever provided him that he desired, she had failed. He had needed a connection at court, and the influence of her family name was not enough. Why, then, was he married to her? She was now an intolerable burden to him. She had nothing that he could possibly desire or need or love. When she brought five-year-old Diego to him, to try to cheer him up, he sent the boy away so gruffly that the child cried for an hour and refused to go to his father again. It was the last straw. Felipa knew that Columbus hated her now, and that she deserved his hatred, having given him nothing that he wanted.

She went to bed, turned her face to the wall, and soon became exactly as ill as she declared herself to be.

In her last days, Columbus became as solicitous of her as she had ever desired. But she knew in her heart that this did not mean that he loved her. Rather he was doing his duty, and when he talked to her of how sorry he was for his long neglect, she knew that this was said not because he wished her to live so he could do better in the future, but rather because he wanted her forgiveness so that his conscience could be free when at last her death freed him in every other way.

"You will have your greatness, Cristovao, one way or another," she said.

"And you'll be there beside me to see it, my Felipa," he said.

She wanted to believe it, or rather wanted to believe that he actually desired it, but she knew better. "I ask only this promise: Diego will inherit everything from you."

"Everything," said Columbus.

"No other sons," she said. "No other heirs."

"I promise," he said.

Soon afterward she died. Columbus held Diego's hand as they followed her coffin to the family tomb, and as they walked, side by side, he suddenly lifted up his son and held him in his arms and said, "You are all I have left of her. I treated your mother unfairly, Diego, and you as well, and I can't promise to do any better in the future. But I made her this promise, and I make it to you. All that I ever have, all that I ever achieve, every t.i.tle, every bit of property, every honor, every sc.r.a.p of fame, it will be yours."

Diego heard this and remembered it. His father loved him after all. And his father had loved his mother, too. And someday, if his father became great, Diego would be great after him. He wondered if that meant that someday he would own an island, the way Grandmother did. He wondered if it meant that someday he would sail a ship. He wondered if it meant that someday he would stand before kings. He wondered if it meant that his father would leave him now and he would never see him again.

The following spring, Columbus left Portugal and crossed the border into Spain. He took Diego to the Franciscan monastery of La Rdbida, near Palos. "I was taught by Franciscan fathers in Genova," he told his son. "Learn well, become a scholar and a Christian and a gentleman. And I will be about the business of serving G.o.d and making our fortune in the process."

Columbus left him there, but he visited from time to time, and in his letters to the prior, Father Juan Perez, he never failed to mention Diego and ask after him. Many sons had less of their fathers than that, Diego knew. And a small part of his dear father was far greater than all the love and attention of many lesser men. Or so he told himself to stave off the humiliation of tears during the loneliness of those first months.

Columbus himself went on to the court of Spain, where he would present a much more carefully refined version of the same unprovable calculations that had failed in Portugal. This time, though, he would persist. Whatever Felipa had suffered, whatever Diego was suffering now, deprived of family and left among strangers in a strange place, it would all be justified. For in the end Columbus would succeed, and the triumph would be worth the price.

He would not fail, he was sure of it. Because even though he had no proof, he knew that he was right.

"I have no proof," said Hunahpu, "but I know that I'm right."

The woman on the other end of the line sounded young. Too young to be influential, surely, and yet she was the only one who had answered his message, and so he would have to speak to her as if she mattered because what other choice did he have?

"How do you know you're right without evidence?" she asked mildly.

"I didn't say I have no evidence. Just that there can never be proof of what would have happened."

"Fair enough," she answered.

"All I ask is a chance to present my evidence to Kemal."

"I can't guarantee you that," she said. "But you can come to Juba and present your evidence to me."

Come to Juba! As if he had an unlimited budget for travel, he who was on the verge of being dismissed from Past.w.a.tch altogether. "I'm afraid that such a journey would be beyond my means," he said.

"Of course we'll pay for your travel," she said, "and you can stay here as our guest."

That startled him. How could someone so young have authority to promise him that? "Who did you say you were?"

"Diko," she said.

Now he remembered the name; why hadn't he made the connection in the first place? Though it was Kemal's project to which he was determined to contribute, it was not Kemal who had found the Intervention. "Are you the Diko who-"

"Yes," she said.

"Have you read my papers? The ones I've been posting and-"

"And which no one has paid the slightest attention to? Yes."

"And do you believe me?"

"I have questions for you," she said.

"And if you're satisfied with my answers?"

"Then I'll be very surprised," she said. "Everyone knows that the Aztec Empire was on the verge of collapse when Cortes arrived in the 1520s. Everyone also knows that there was no possibility of Mesoamerican technology rivaling European technology in any way. Your speculations about a Mesoamerican conquest of Europe are irresponsible and absurd."

"And yet you called me."

"I believe in leaving no stone unturned. You're a stone that n.o.body's turned yet, and so ..."

"You're turning me."

"Will you come?"

"Yes," he said. A faint hope was better than no response at all.

"Send copies of all pertinent files beforehand, so I can look them over on my own computer."

"Most of them are already in the Past.w.a.tch system," he said.

"Then send me your bibliography. When can you come? I need to request a leave of absence on your behalf so you can consult with us."

"You can do that?"

"I can request it," she said.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"I can't read everything by tomorrow. Next week. Tuesday. But send me all the files and lists I need immediately."

"And you'll request my leave of absence ... when I send the files?"

"No, I'll request it in the next fifteen minutes. Nice talking to you. I hope you aren't a crackpot."

"I'm not," he said. "Nice talking to you, too."

She broke the connection.

An hour later, his supervisor came to see him. "What have you been doing?" she demanded.

"What I've always been doing," he answered.