'That's quite a story,' said Fallon. 'The Spaniards took two hundred years to get on top of the Mayas, and the Lakondon tribe they never licked. The Mayas were kept down until 1847 when they rose in rebellion here in Quintana Roo. It was more populated in those days and the Mayas gave the Mexicans, as they now were, a hell of a trouncing in what was known as the War of the Castes. Try as they might the Mexicans could never get back in again.- In 1915 the Mayas declared an independent state; they dealt with British Honduras and made business deals with British firms. The top Maya then was General Mayo: he was a really tough old bird; but the Mexicans got at him through his vanity. They signed a treaty with him in 1935. made him a general in the official Mexican army and invited him to Mexico City where they seduced him with civilization. He died in 1952. After 1935 the Mayas seemed to lose heart. They'd had a tough time since the War of the Castes and the land was becoming depopulated. On top of famine, which hit them hard, the Mexicans started to move colonists into Chan Santa Cruz. There are not more than a few thousand of the indios sublevados left now, yet they still rule the roost in their own area.' He smiled. 'No Mexican tax collectors allowed.'
Halstead had broken off his conversation with his wife. 'And they don't like archeologists much, either,' he observed.
'Oh, it's not as bad as it was in the old times,' said Fallon tolerantly. 'In the early days of General Mayo any foreigner 'coming into Quintana Roo was automatically a dead man. Remember the story I told of the archeologist whose bones were built into a wall? But they've lost a lot of steam since men. They're all right if they're left alone. They're better than the chicleros.'
Halstead looked at me and said, 'Still glad to be-along with us, Wheale?' He had a thin smile on his face.
I ignored him. 'Why isn't all this common knowledge?' I asked Fallon. 'A government running a species of slavery and a whole people nearly wiped out surely calls for comment.'
Fallon knocked out his pipe on the leg of the table. 'Africa is popularly known as the Dark Continent,' he said. 'But mere are some holes and corners of Central and South America which are pretty blade. Your popular journalist sitting in his office in London or New York has very limited horizons; he can't see this far and he won't leave his office.'
He put the pipe in his pocket. 'But I'll tell you something. The trouble with Quintana Roo isn't the Indians or the chicleros; they're people, and you can always get along with people somehow.' He stretched out his arm and pointed. There's your trouble.'
I looked to where he was pointing and saw nothing unusual -- just the trees on the other side of the strip.
'You still don't understand?' he asked, and swung round to Rudetsky. 'What kind of a job did you have in clearing this strip?'
The hardest work I've ever done,' said Rudetsky. 'I've worked in rain forest before -- I was an army engineer during the war -- but this one beats all hell.'
That's it,' said Fallon flatly. 'Do you know how they classify the forest here? They say it's a twenty-foot forest, or a ten-foot forest, or a four-foot forest. A four-foot forest is getting pretty bad -- it means that you can't see more than four feet in any direction -- but there are worse than that. Add disease, snakes and shortage of water and you realize why the chicleros are among the toughest men in the world -- those of diem that survive. The forest is the enemy in Quintana Roo. and well have to fight it to find Uaxuanoc.'
II
We went to Camp Two next day, travelling in a helicopter which flew comparatively slowly and not too high. I looked down at the green tide which flowed beneath my feet and thought back to the conversation I'd had with Pat Harris about Jack Gatt and our hypothetical encounter in Quintana Roo. While I had envisaged something more than Epping Forest I certainly hadn't thought it would be this bad.
Fallon had explained the peculiarities of the Quintana Roo forest quite simply. He said, 'I told you the reason why there is no native gold in Yucatan is because of the geology of the area -- there's just a limestone cap over the peninsula. That explains the forest, too, and why it's worse than any other.'
'It doesn't explain it to me,' I said. 'Or maybe I'm particularly stupid.'
'No; you just don't have the technical knowledge,' he said 'The rainfall is quite heavy, but when it falls it sinks right into the ground until it meets an impermeable layer. Thus there is a vast reservoir of fresh water under Yucatan, but a shortage of water because there are no rivers. The water is quite close to the surface: on the coast you can dig a hole on the beach three feet from the sea and you'll get fresh water In the interior sometimes the limestone cap collapses to reveal the underground water -- that's a cenote. But the point is thai the trees always have water available at their roots. In any other rain forest, such as in the Congo, most of the water is drained away into rivers. In Quintana Roo it's available to the trees and they take full advantage.'
I looked down at the forest and wondered if it was a twenty-foot forest or a four-footer. Whatever it was, I couldn't see the ground and we were less than five hundred feet high If Jack Gatt had any sense he wouldn't come anywhere near Quintana Roo.
Camp Two was much simpler than Camp One. There was a rough hangar for the helicopter -- a wall-less structure looking something like a Dutch barn; a dining-room-cum-lounge, a store hut for equipment and four huts for sleeping quarters All the huts were factory-made prefabs and all had been flown in by helicopter. Simpler it might have been but there was no lack of comfort; every hut had an air-conditioning unit and the refrigerator was full of beer. Fallon didn't believe in roughing it unless he had to.
Apart from the four of us there were the cook and his helper to do the housekeeping and the helicopter pilot. What he was going to do, apart from flying us back and forward between camps, I didn't know; in the search for Uaxuanoc the helicopter would be about as much use as a bull's udder.
All around lay the forest, green and seemingly impenetrable. I walked to the edge of the clearing and inspected it, trying to assess it by the rating Fallon had given. As near as I could tell this would be a fifteen-foot forest -- a rather thin growth by local standards. The trees were tall, pushing and fighting in a fiercely competitive battle for light, and were wreathed and strangled by an incredible variety of parasitic plant life. And apart from the purely human sounds which came from the huts everything was deathly silent.
I turned to find Katherine standing near me. 'Just inspecting the enemy,' I said. 'Have you been here before -- in Qumtana Roo, I mean?'
'No,' she said. 'Not here. I was on digs with Paul in Campeche and Guatemala. I've never seen anything like this before.'
'Neither have I,' I said. 'I've lived a sheltered life. If Fallon had taken the trouble to explain things when we were back in England as he explained them at Camp One I doubt if I'd be here at all. This is a wild-goose chase if
