Mike had no choice. It was his only way inside and he must take it, then play it by ear, and handle each emergency as it arose. Well, he had experience at that, and he had been warned.
“I’m going in, Johnny, and I’m going to bring Erik out, no matter what happens.” He turned to Johnny. “How long will it take to get down there?”
“Couple of hours. Only the last few minutes will worry you.”
Raglan studied the trail that seemed to end in a blank wall. That made no sense unless it was some kind of an entrance. Because this path was shown on the design did not mean it was visible on the ground, only that it was there, and it led to something.
Johnny glanced around, then said, “Does a body good, talkin’ to somebody speaks his language. I taught Kawasi an’ some others. Convinced ’em they’d need to know it, but part was pure selfishness. I was lonely, like. That Kawasi now, hungry to know. Ever since she was a little tyke, always askin’ questions about how we live, think, work, all that kind of stuff. Zipacna was the same.”
“Zipacna?”
“Oh, sure! He lived amongst them! Acted like he was one of them but he was against ’em from the start. I’d not take any of them to my places. Met ’em in the woods, like. Zipacna, he was always after me to take him to where I lived. Finally I got suspicious. Seemed unnatural he’d persist. All the time he was a traitor. His mother was a witchwoman. So he speaks English better’n anybody, better even than Kawasi, because he’s been over to the other side.”
“You’re sure?”
“Been over several times. Brought back some doodads, too. Some folks think he hisself is The Hand.”
As the old man rambled on, Raglan listened with only half his attention. He was concentrating on the diagram on the gold plaque. Most of it represented the Forbidden area, yet there were other diagrams in the corners of the plaque, and one seemed to be this ruin where he stood.
Suppose there was a way to the other side from here? After all, that old cowboy could not have carried his gold very far. It had to be very heavy. Suppose somewhere among these ruins there was an opening he could use?
“Johnny? What about this place? Was there ever an opening from here?”
“Never heard of it. But then, those folks over at the pueblo, they never come here. They turn their heads away from this place. Even Kawasi.”
He swept a hand. “All this here is old! Older than them pyramids you got back yonder. There’s a place over there”-—he pointed—”a hall, sort of, lined with figures of animals, deer, buffalo, llamas, all sorts of animals, an’ at the head of the hall the biggest statue of a jaguar anybody ever did see. Ever’ one of them is carved an’ polished until they shine.
“Beautiful, that’s what they are! But no figures of man or woman!”
“Men did not think of themselves or their women as beautiful. They could see the symmetry and the beautiful movements of animals, but their own bodies seemed clumsy by comparison. Possibly that’s why so many primitive peoples worshipped animals, because of their beauty, either sitting still or in movement.
“Early man was awkward by comparison, and ill-formed, too. It needed years of breeding and the desire for beauty before man began to achieve it.”
Johnny stood up again. “You figure to do all you say, you better have at it. You ain’t got much time.” He paused, looking around. “Maybe I better come with you. Maybe I better.”
XXXV
Down the mountainside lay the collapsed ruins of what had been a mighty city, a fortress, or whatever it was. Only a chaotic mass of tumbled stone remained. Fallen columns, broken statues, ruined walls, and cavernous black openings that gaped threateningly on every side. Mike Raglan led the way, threading a path through the tangle, wary always of enemies.
Below them and far off he could see the vast black bulk of the Forbidden.
“Basalt,” Johnny said. “Volcanic rock like you see in lava flows out west. Shaped and polished like glass. God only knows who built it, but I doubt any human did. No windows, no doors—only that gate and the small door beside it.”
“There might be one where that path ends.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Johnny? If you want in this, get back up that trail somewhere with that Sharps and be ready. When I come, I’ll likely come fast.”
“How you goin’ to find him? Take an army a month to search out all those passages and rooms, if what we saw back yonder was a map.”
“I’ve already got an idea.” Mike paused, studying the ruins scattered along the slope before him. He wondered what had destroyed the original structures. The passing of ages had done their work, but there must have been some cataclysm, some frightful disaster that brought doom to all who lived here.
“Do the people of the pueblos never come here?”
“Them? No, they don’t. They pay strict mind to their own affairs. If they are curious they surely don’t show it. Mostly they won’t even talk of this place, but they’ve not seen it, either. There’s nothing lives here they want, and those big lizards have killed all that lived here. Now they go afield to hunt theirselves.”
“Did you say you’ve killed them?”
“Time or two. They don’t die easy, Raglan. They surely don’t. You fight shy of them.”
Mike eased his pack on his shoulders, shifting the straps. They walked on, and Johnny explained what he had learned about what lay below, with occasional references to Kawasi’s people. “Like they lived on two islands, miles apart. There’s no trading going on, no traffic back and forth. Folks down below there refuse to admit there’s anybody around but themselves, whilst Kawasi’s people just tend to their knitting. There have been a few clashes in the past, but The Hand never lets his people know about them, and the folks on our side usually come out losers, although The Hand has never made a direct attack on the settlements. Always on small parties out cutting timber.”
From atop the pack Mike took the folded robe Tazzoc had given him and donned it; then he switched his rubber-soled shoes for moccasins like Tazzoc’s. Several times during their walk he had paused to pick up bits of stone. Some he discarded, but he had been alert for what he wanted.
He found it at last, an outcropping of white chalk. At the base of the cliff he picked up a dozen fragments and put them in his pockets. Johnny watched but offered no comment.
“When I was a youngster, schools taught us mighty little, but the times were such a man just had to learn to think. There was nobody we could call on, so we just naturally solved our own problems our own way. When a different set of circumstances showed up, we just figured out how to cope. My folks made most everything they used with materials out of the woods or from hunting.
“These folks who came back over from our side, they made out. They fitted themselves into the world they found, and learned more all the time.
“If you get the idea they are like us, you’ll be wrong. They are different an’ they think different. Folks back to home used to talk about ‘human nature.’ Ain’t no such thing. What they called human nature was the way they’d been taught, and they figured everybody had the same feelin’s, same reactions. Well, it ain’t so. Injuns had been raised different from us an’ they reacted different. Over here, folks are different.
“You take them down there, for example. I think they all hate one another. Everyone seems to be secretly tryin’ to figure ways to outwit his neighbor or even his brother. Lord knows there’s meanness enough in our world, but to these people meanness is a way of life.
“Not Kawasi’s folks. Different as day an’ night. But those down yonder—don’t you trust anybody. You may think this Tazzoc is on your side. Don’t you believe it. He’s on his own side an’ nobody else’s.”
“He wants to save his Archives. He wants them to be used.”
“Maybe. I think prob’ly he does, but that won’t change him none. If he can do you in, he’ll do it. He will do it even if it hurts him. I seen it happen.”
What was that Erik had said? To trust nobody? Did he know, then? Had he already discovered or perceived what people he was dealing with?
“How could such a people exist?”
“You call that existence? They are dying of their own hatred, killing themselves off with their own poison.”
Johnny stopped behind a shoulder of rock where the dim trail took a sharp turn to skirt the valley below. From here the streets and alleys were plainly seen. Only a few people moved about. There seemed to be no wheeled transportation within view.