Curses!

''Second, the darkness will be sundered and turned to light, and the terrible voices of the gods will be heard in the air, and there will be a mighty pummeling of the soul so that the spirit languishes and faints. Their treasures will be lost and their batabobs and ahlelobs will desert them...’”

The pince-nez were plucked off. “I'm afraid I have no wholly unambiguous referents for batabobs and ahlelobs in this context.'

'The batabob was the governor of the area, the big chief,” Abe said promptly. “The ahlelob, I think, was the assistant chief.'

She looked at him. So did Gideon, to whom it came as a surprise that Abe knew something about the Mayan language. No, not a surprise; an item of interest, maybe. Gideon had been astonished too many times by the range of his knowledge to be surprised anymore.

Under Dr. Garrison's uncompromising stare Abe smiled and shrugged modestly. “I guess I read it somewhere?'

'Thank you.” With her index finger she found her place again.

'Maybe we can get him to play Trivial Pursuit with us,” Julie whispered to Gideon.

'Not with me,” Gideon muttered back.

''Third, the one called Tucumbalam will turn their entrails to fire and bloody flux.’”

This caused Worthy to grimace and push the rest of his ice cream away.

''Fourth, the one called Xecotcavach will pierce their skulls so that their brains spill onto the earth.’”

'Yuck, I'm grossing out,” Leo announced, shoveling ice cream into his mouth.

Emma leaned stiffly toward him, her face intense. “Sh!” she whispered sharply. “This isn't a joke!'

Gideon frowned. Dim memories stirred. Wasn't it Emma who had belonged to some oddball group dedicated to the otherworldly theories of Von Daniken, or Velikovsky, or someone like that? Yes, it was, he recalled. Once she had cornered him into a long, dippy discussion of how it was that a carved, five-thousand-year-old Japanese Dogu figure wore what could only have been an astronaut's helmet and goggles. ('And, as you must know, Dr. Oliver, goggles hadn't even been invented in the Stone Age!') He had spent much of his subsequent time in Yucatan trying to stay out of her way without offending her.

Leo mimed a good-natured apology and quieted.

Dr. Garrison had paused coolly at the interruption. Now she continued the litany of calamity.

''Fifth, the beast that turns men to stone will come among them from the Underworld.

''And all this will be only the beginning of their vexation by the devil, for the Lords of Xibalba will come and gouge out their eyes, and cut off their heads, and grind and crumble their nerves and their bones, and torment them until they die and are no more.

'Only thus will Vucub-Came be satisfied, and Holom-Tucur, who has a head but no body, and Balam-Quitze, and the Lord Hun-Hunahpu, and Gekaquch, and the Lords Zibakihay and Ahquehay, and the Lords...'

'Do you suppose this goes on much longer?” Julie whispered.

'I don't think so,” Gideon said. “It's only one page long.'

Balam-Arab, and Mahucatah, and even Ah Puch, who never tires.’”

'Mayan god of death,” Gideon murmured knowledgeably, impressing Julie with another bit of arcana pulled from who knew where.

''And when all this is done and the light turns to darkness for all time, there will be terrible mourning and crying...'

Dr. Garrison paused, letting the somber words hang on the air. By now the lush, rhythmic Georgia accent seemed to suit them. “Mohh-nin'...and crahh-in'...'

''For it will be,'” she concluded mellowly, watching her audience and not the paper, “'the end of the cigar.’”

'The end of the cigar,” she repeated, cutting off any possible incipient ripple of laughter, “is a Mayan metaphor for closure, for the end of life.'

She removed her pince-nez and with her thumb and forefinger slowly rubbed the indentations in the bridge of her nose. “For the end,” she said, “of everything.'

[Back to Table of Contents]

Chapter 8

* * * *

Humming to himself, beginning to relax, even enjoying the feel of the sweat pooling at the small of his back, Gideon snipped with the pruning shears here, there, tugged gently at a sturdy brown root, and sat back on his heels to study the situation a little more.

It was good to be working with his hands again, good to have a new skeleton to himself. (He had been guiltily relieved when Harvey somewhat shamefacedly announced his preference for nonskeletal work this time.) He snipped again, tugged again, and with an exclamation of satisfaction freed a gnarled three-inch root segment and tossed it through the doorway behind him. He laid the shears down next to the machete.

Machetes and pruning shears were hardly tools of the trade, but in the scrubby, stubborn jungles of Yucatan