The Mask of the Sun Read online

  By day, Cimatl and the other priests of the Tenocha continued to beseech the Sun for help; but by night Cimatl, fasting and desperate, had as a last resort begun this other, secret worship.

  Here amid tall reeds, the darkness of midnight seemed the deepest. And now, as on the two previous nights, Cimatl began to chant a litany to the gods of darkness whose names were terrible to speak. As his voice rose up, he heard, as on the preceding midnight, wings that could not be those of any ordinary bird, beating at some great distance—beating so fast they made a steady roaring, like the wind in great tree branches.

  Cimatl threw back his head and saw a looming shape too large for any bird. Amid a sudden rush of air that rattled reeds about him on all sides, he stumbled in his chant. When unexpected light stabbed down, it was so violent against the entrenched darkness that Cimatl was completely blinded at first. The terrible idea smote him that this might be the very eye of the Sun, returned in midnight anger at his servant's faithlessness, and his heart failed him momentarily. But even as he cowered against the burning wrath to come, the light dimmed. His eyes could start to see again, and no, this small light was not the Sun. It seemed to issue from the belly of some hovering god of eagles, from whose belly also there was being let down some kind of a large burden on a string or cord.

  Around Cimatl, a mad pattern of reed shadows danced. His vision gradually gained strength against the artificial glare. The light was strongest directly, beneath the hovering eagle-god, where it shone full upon another flat rock. On this a huge snake coiled, drawn perhaps from mud and water by some faint sun-warmth still lingering in the stone.

  Cimatl saw that the burden being lowered on a cord, directly above the snake, was of the size and shape of man, but garbed like no man he had ever seen, in a peculiar suit that covered nearly all the skin. In one gloved hand of the suspended figure, a short lance flared once with orange fire. On the rock below, the snake's head vanished with a puff of steam and stringy splattering. The serpent's body, thick as an arm, writhed there until the man-shape stood beside it and with one booted foot shoved it away into the reeds and water.

  In the air above, the roar of wings held steady. The man-shape raised its face and looked toward the medicine man. Long hair of black, with golden ornaments. Red daggers drawn on its chest. "Cimatl!"

  The priest bent down and hid his eyes in awe.

  "Cimatl, the favor you have asked the gods of night is granted you. Greatness shall be your people's lot, from this night forward."

  After the voice had been silent for a few moments, Cimatl dared to squint timidly toward the speaker. In one gloved hand, the god was holding something out to him. Cimatl eagerly plunged off his own rock into the shallows. A stump of broken reed stabbed into his foot, but he did not yet feel the wound. Something dying thrashed in mud; the Snake of Time was still alive, but with its head had gone its power to strike. Meanwhile, in droning triumph, the Eagle of the Night maintained its place above. In his exaltation, Cimatl strove to miss not a symbol, not a nuance, of this mighty vision. One quick glance upward against the light showed him a symbolic dagger, red as blood, limned on a smooth gray flank.

  Then he held his eyes downcast, for he was standing now before the man-shaped god, who still held something out for him to take. Groping at the edge of his averted vision, the priest carefully received in both hands a small weight of metal.

  The son of the Night-Eagle was speaking to him again: "With this gift you shall become a mighty nation. See that you keep it hidden. Let only your First Speaker dare to put it on his face, and that in secrecy. Do not mention it in your songs, when you shall come to sing them, or show it in your sculptures when you come to carve. Let no one know of it except your inner priesthood."

  Cimatl wanted to speak his transcendent gratitude, but could not find his voice. He managed to make a violent gesture of assent, both his hands locked on the gods' gift as if they might crush it in their zeal. Abruptly, then, the almost-blinding lights were gone. A few words were spoken nearby, in some inhuman-sounding tongue, as if the visiting deities exchanged banal comments between themselves. Then suddenly the wings were beating louder, casting down a gale. Cimatl was left in darkness, temporarily blind again, able only to listen until the rush of wings had receded, vanished into the sky.

  Cimatl turned away then from the lake. Trying to chant his gratitude, he staggered amid unseen obstacles toward the distant fire-specks marking the Tenocha camp. His eyes gradually retuned themselves once more to starlight and he began to see his way. He felt pain now from his injured foot, but pain did not matter. Nothing mattered, save the gift he held in his hands.

  He could see now that it was of metal and crystal, a leather thong strung through holes in its outer flanges. Let only your First Speaker dare to put it on his face… with this gift you shall become a mighty nation… Not a word of that solemn charge would Cimatl ever forget.

  The Mask now in his hands had no high cheekbones, nor mouth or chin, nor was it gold. It was not much more than a large pair of goggles. A century would pass before the Mixtec slaves encased it in a gold model of a smiling face. They were to work for the secret pleasure of Cimatl's successor as First Speaker of the Aztec-Tenocha, who by then had become the lords of most of Mexico.

  * * *

  Chapter 3. The Finding

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  After a morning flight down from Atlanta, Mike Gabrieli spent the middle part of his day in Miami Beach, talking fruitlessly to police and to people at the hotel where Tom had been registered when he disappeared, leaving a suitcase, some clothes, and an unpaid bill. Then Mike got on the late-afternoon flight from Miami to Key West.

  He had never been south of Miami before, and found the look of the Keys pleasantly surprising. Unwalled by hotels, and stitched by the slender thread of U. S. One, an immensity of blue-green water embraced near-tropic islands. Near the end of the brief flight he tried to catch a glimpse of Cuba, which was now closer than Miami, but he could see only August clouds massed on the south horizon.

  From the air, Key West looked more built up than he had expected. Still, the airport was far from busy. Actually it seemed almost deserted. The next flight back to Miami— there were apparently no scheduled flights at all to anywhere else—might be planned for next month instead of tomorrow morning.

  One cab was still waiting after his few fellow passengers had vanished into the sullen heat. Mike got into it without hurrying, sport shirt already sticking to his ribs, and dropped his little traveling bag at his feet. He gave the driver the address of Aunt Tessie's house, and hoped silently that the air conditioners there were working as well as the cab's was.

  The cab left him on a corner in what might have been a lower-middle-class suburb, except that at least two of Aunt Tessie's neighbors were building large boats in their back yards. A dog barked someplace, and another answered. The vegetation looked tropical, all of it different from what was common anywhere north of Florida.

  Feeling in his pocket for the key, Mike hefted his little bag and strode down the narrow walk toward the little white stucco house. Palms in the front yard, and in the back what looked like a tall banana tree. He had seen family snapshots of the place; a number of relatives had stayed here at one time or another. Tessie also let the house out frequently through a temporary rental service, so the utilities were kept turned on. He had heard there were two bedrooms.

  Looking into a screened-in front porch, he saw some heavy wooden lawn chairs, stained redwood not long ago. He walked on. His key was for the side door, which he entered from the carport.

  The carport was empty—completely empty—and Mike stood there for a moment making a teeth-baring grimace. The Humphrey Bogart look, Tom used to say. It was no doubt the dumb little bastard's own fault, whatever had happened to him. Mike could only pray that he was still in one piece, somewhere…

  A four-inch green lizard sat on a boundary wall of open-work masonry and looked impassively back at Mike. Tom had lived in this house
for a while when he first came down to the Keys, a year and a half ago, to work as a diver for the treasure hunters and to try to get his head together, as he had put it. Then came the Great Pot Party, infamous in the annals of the Gabrieli family. Police cars right here in Aunt Jessie's driveway, and all hell broken loose with the old folks. Although the cops had never convicted him formally of anything, Tom had been firmly requested to move out. Now, since his disappearance, Tessie seemed to be having guilt feelings, as if her eviction notice had contributed to some ultimate downfall.

  Mike unlocked the side door and went in, to find all serene. Inside was no hotter than outside—it was evidently impossible to close the louvered doors and windows tightly. After he got the three window air-conditioners going, Mike looked around.

  Inside the doors of kitchen cabinets were notes, informing all tenants where the household goods and fuses could be found, when they could pick the two kinds of limes from the trees in the back yard, how to obtain good plumbers, electricians, babysitters. Tessie had renting down to a science. She admonished tenants to keep their foodstuffs tightly sealed against tropical insects and to bring all lawn furniture indoors if they left during hurricane season, August through November.

  The phone, like everything else, was working. But the first time Mike tried the number that he had brought along, there was no answer. After ten rings, he hung up and went to inspect the refrigerator. Two cans of beer and a bottle and a half of pop. He again consulted the kitchen-cabinet notes, then found the key to the tool shed just where it was supposed to be, on a small brass hook just inside the door leading to the carport. He went outside.

  The grass was only a couple of inches long; somebody must be mowing it regularly. The tool shed was a small metal structure set against the back wall of the house. When he took off the padlock and swung the creaking door, he was observed by a solemn frog who looked up blinking like a long-term prisoner, but made no break for freedom. Maybe he could squeeze in and out under the loose door. Maybe enough bugs came in to keep him happy

  As Aunt Jessie had said, there was a bicycle in the shed, amid a miscellany of tools and junk. He dragged the power mower aside and got it out.

  After a quick trip to a nearby grocery, Mike popped open a soft-drink can and tried Sally Zimmerman's number again.

  "Hello?" The tone of the girl's voice answering told him nothing.

  "Sally?"

  "Yes, who's this?"

  "I'm Mike Gabrieli. Tom's brother." He let silence grow for a few seconds before he went on. "I 'm in town right now, and I'd like very much to talk to you."

  It took a few moments before she said, "All right. Is there any word yet on Tom?"

  "No, that's why I'm down here. Listen, it's six o'clock. Have you made any arrangements for dinner? If not, I'll take you out somewhere—your choice, I don't know my way around."

  "All right—thank you, that would be fine." Yet something in her voice was holding back. "Where are you staying?"

  They traded information. Sally volunteered to borrow her roommate's car and pick him up. It sounded as if she hadn't been to the house before.

  By dusk, the two of them were seated in a cool restaurant, looking out through a wide, sealed window at sunset gulls, and a moored rank of what Mike supposed were commercial fishing boats.

  "…so when your father called me, I felt so sorry. I wished I could do something to help him. He sounded like such a nice old man."

  "He is." Mike considered. "See, he and Mom are both getting up there. Tom's being what they call a little bit wild has just gotten to them more and more of late. He was arrested last year in some marijuana-smoking deal down here. Probably you heard about that."

  Her tanned fingers broke a dinner roll and started to butter it. She was wearing a pink top that left her midriff bare, and it wasn't hard to see why Tom had kept a more-or-less steady thing going with her. She said, "I heard about that incident from Tom—I wasn't there. I gather it was at your aunt's house."

  "Yeah. So. I want to ask if you have some clue to what's happened to him. Maybe there's something you didn't want to worry nice old Dad Gabrieli with, but you wouldn't mind telling me."

  "Like I say, I wish I could." Sal took a neat but good-sized bite of roll. "The police were asking, too. But I couldn't help them out."

  "He told you he was going up to Miami Beach?"

  "Yes, but not why. You and he look quite a bit alike." She studied his face almost impersonally. "He used to say you were a little bigger and meaner. Enough alike so I have no doubt you're really his brother."

  "Why should you have any doubt about that? I mean, why would I say so if I wasn't?"

  It looked as if she hadn't heard the question. Very much in control right now, this girl.

  Mike asked, "Excuse me if I get personal. Tom talked as if you and he were—very close. Is that the way it was?"

  She gave him a harder look than any yet. "If you mean did we live in the same room and fight over closet space, no. Neither of us wanted that. If you mean did we spend a lot of time in bed together, yes."

  "So he just said, I'm going up to Miami Beach and never gave you a reason, and you never asked him why."

  "That's right. Well, here comes the real food at last." But when the red snapper was put in front of her, she didn't really attack it seriously.

  Mike let her nibble a little before he said, "You know, Tom phoned me in Atlanta, a couple of nights before he went up to Miami Beach."

  "Your father said."

  "But there's a thing or two my father doesn't know because I've never told him. Things Tom told me on the phone. I was the only one at home that night he called." He took a mouthful of his own fish and chewed it stolidly. Delicious. Well, he thought, here goes. "About the whereabouts of a certain object."

  He had been wondering if she might drop her fork, but it just stayed there in her hand. She looked across at Mike, then down at her plate, then out the window. She put the fork down finally, picked up a roll and looked at that, and settled at last for a cigarette, which she took from a metal case like one a soldier might carry.

  "Oh, damn it," she said. Her voice sounded softer and younger than before. "Just damn it all anyway."

  "Now, I 'm going to have to dig into that, Sally. Maybe I'll have to get the cops to help me. See, I don't care one way or the other about this package itself, or who else might get into trouble or might not. All I care about is finding Tom— finding what's happened to him."

  She fidgeted with the metal case. "You smoke?"

  "No. Not even tobacco."

  "He wasn't into the—drug thing, anymore, if he ever was. I told you, that famous pot-smoking party was a couple of months before I knew him."

  "Good." Mike waited.

  Sal glared at him a while and finally had to speak. "Is this—thing—wherever he said it would be?"

  "It's supposed to be somewhere around Aunt Tessie's house. I figure Tom kept a key to the place even after she officially threw him out… as soon as we finish dinner, I 'm going back and do a thorough search. You want to be there when I find it?"

  A violent headshake. "I want nothing whatever to do with it."

  "If you're so sure as all that, you must know exactly what it is."

  She wouldn't answer. Puffed out smoke. Wished with all her power (he was certain) that the airplane that brought him down had crashed on landing, killing all aboard.

  "Things are getting awfully goddamned serious, Sally." His voice was low and slow. "My brother might be dead. If you're really his friend, I want what's good for you as well as him. If not…" She closed her eyes. "I'll drive you over there."

  Night had come down fast. The Datsun's headlights pulling into the carport lit up the red metal cabinet like a warning barricade. It sat right at the carport's rear, just next to where the back yard's grass began, where nothing had been before. Sally parked a yard from the cabinet, and Mike got out of the car and stood there looking down at it. Its doors were hooked closed with a smal
l unlocked padlock. The cabinet was about a foot deep, two feet wide, three high.

  "Evenin'. "

  The southern accent came from just beyond the nearby wall of openwork masonry that edged the yard and carport. In the next yard, the lights from the next house filtering through shrubbery behind him, a tallish man, gray-haired but hale, stood leaning on the wall.

  "Hello," said Mike.

  The neighbor smiled. "Saw y'all were stayin' here now, so I brought the little cabinet back. Miz Gabrieli keeps the gasoline in there for the power mower—I figured you might be wantin' it. Last tenants just left it sittin' out in the carport when they left. Then a couple weeks ago we had a hurricane watch, kinda early for the season. So I took it in. Back in '62 when she blew, I got a picnic table from the yard on't' other side right through the wall o' my house. Don't pay't' leave stuff sittin' round the yard if she's gonna blow."

  "Thank you," said Mike.

  "Hope y 'all don't mind my takin' it in. But it's safer when she's gonna blow."

  "Quite all right."

  Mike unlocked the side door and ushered Sally inside. After turning on a light in the living room, he stationed himself beside a kitchen window where he could look out into the carport and keep an eye on the red cabinet and also on the yard next door. He said, "Whyn't you get us two beers out of the refrigerator? Or if you'd like something else, I think there's bourbon and vodka above the sink."

  "You said you were going to search for—something."

  He got a beer for himself, tasted it, continued looking out.

  "Where's it supposed to be hidden?"

  "Right in that little cabinet the kindly neighbor just brought back."

  "Tom said he put it there? Do you suppose it's still—? "

  "I don't know. I'm waiting for that man to go inside before I go out again to take a look. He's still goofing around in his yard. What is it, Sally? What did Tom hide?"