“They seem healthy,” J.B. commented.
“Sure they do, John. They’ve had fifty generations to get used to whatever toxins might be present in it.”
“All right, listen up,” Ryan said. “This is a new situation on me.”
“On all.” Jak pulled a face.
“Sure. Way I see it, we’re safer than safe here at the moment. Our stock’s higher than a snake in an eagle’s beak with these natives. Partly for the help we gave and even more for the fact that they seem to think that Jak here is just a short step away from Christ himself.”
“Man who would be king,” Doc muttered. “Oh, I believe that I might already have picked out that literary reference. Have I? Did I? Or was it the one-eyed man becoming king in the country of the blind? I disremember which. Could be the one or it could be the other. Oh, my burning brain of fire.”
Ryan waited until the ramblings had faded away, then he carried on. “Only thing is, these aren’t like any people we’ve ever met in Deathlands. No way of knowing how they’ll react to any given set of events. Don’t let the blasters out of your sight. Don’t go anywhere on your own. That applies to you, Jak, even more than the rest of us. All right?”
“Why me?”
“Because nobody here knows how gods get treated.”
“Very well,” Dean said, grinning. “Mebbe I can sort of be the god’s best friend.”
Mildred patted the boy on the back. “I’ll let you be in my dream, Dean, just as long as I can be in your dream.”
THE MEAL WAS HELD out-of-doors, in front of the main building of the village, which was a longhouse where the official business of the place was enacted.
Itzcoatl, deprived of his mask, had told them that. He was revealed to be one of the tallest men in the village, with gold rings through his ears so heavy that they had pulled down the lobes, almost to his broad shoulders. Across his chest, he had a tattoo of twin serpents, entwined, openmouthed. Each held a human skull in its gaping jaws.
He still wore a green robe decorated with the same beautiful feathers as the masks.
When Ryan and the others came out of their huts, summoned to the meal, the chief was standing at one end of the table, beckoning for Jak to take the seat at the very head.
“The place of most honor,” he said, seating the others on either side, staggering them with the senior men of the village, including Chimalpopoca and Quauhtlatoa.
The food reminded Ryan of meals that he’d had close to the Grandee, in the south of old Texas and in the very northern regions of old Mexico.
There were plates of corn tortillas and bowls of red beans and chili to go with a large caldron of fish stew. Maize bread was piled all along the table for everyone to help themselves.
The drink was an herbal-flavored liquor that Ryan’s neighbor told him was called octli . Vaguely reminiscent of pulque, it seemed bland enough as you sipped and swallowed, but once it was halfway down the gullet it began to burn with a ferocious fire that belatedly warned you of its high-alcohol potency.
After the fish stew came platters of assorted meats, roasted, with charred skin on the outside, pink and with seeping blood on the inside.
Ryan recognized duck, turkey, venison and what he guessed was some variant on the small pigs that they’d seen running free and wild in the forest. It was delicious and he ate freely, using his hands, dipping into other dishes of mushed vegetables spiced with chili.
Itzcoatl clapped his hands and beckoned to one of the row of young women who knelt submissively between the long table and the bank of cooking fires. “Bring the very best food for our special visitor.”
“For Jak?” Ryan asked.
“Yes. Must we call him by that name of the earth? We have a word that means burning snow and it would be better for him. What do you think?”
“I think name’s Jak,” Jak said.
The woman was approaching, carrying a platter of wood with something at its center, concealed by a cover.