we actually found Uaxuanoc, but he was as cold as ice and any discussion he had with Fallon was purely intellectual. He seemed as uninterested as though he'd merely found a sixpence in the street instead of the city he'd been bursting a gut trying to find, It was Fallon who was bubbling over with excitement. He was as effervescent as a newly opened bottle of champagne and could hardly keep still as he shoved his sketches under Halstead's nose. 'Definitely Old Empire,' he insisted. 'Look at the glyphs.'
He went into a rigmarole which seemed to be in a foreign language. I said, 'Ease up, for heaven's sake! What about letting me in on the secret?'
He stopped and looked at me in astonishment, 'But I'm telling you.'
'You'd better tell me in English.'
He leaned back in his chair and shook his bead sadly. To explain the Mayan calendar would take me more time than I have to spare, so you'll have to take my word for a lot of this. But look here.' He pushed over a set of his squiggles which I recognized as the insects I had seen sculpted on the pillar. 'That's the date of the stele -- it reads: '9 Cycles, 12 Katuns, 10 Tuns, 12 Kins, 4 Eb, 10 Yax', and that's a total of 1,386,112 days, or 3,797 years. Since the Mayan datum from which all time measurement started was 3113 B.C., then that gives us a date of 684 A.D.'
He picked up the paper. There's a bit more to it -- the Mayas were very accurate -- it was 18 days after the new moon in the first cycle of six.'
He had said all that very rapidly and I felt a bit dizzy. 'I'll take your word for it,' I said. 'Are you telling me that Uaxuanoc is nearly thirteen hundred years old?'
That stele is,' he said positively. The city is older, most likely.'
That's a long time before Vivero,' I said thoughtfully. Would the city have been occupied that long?'
'You're confusing Old Empire with New Empire,' he said. The Old Empire collapsed about 800 a.d, and the cities were abandoned, but over a hundred years later there was an invasion of Toltecs -- the Itzas -- and some of the cities were rehabilitated like Chichen Itza and a few others. Uaxuanoc was one of them, very likely.' He smiled. 'Vivero referred often to the Temple of Kukulkan in Uaxuanoc. We have reason to believe that Kukulkan was a genuine historical personage; the man who led the Toltecs into Yucatan, very much as Moses led the Children of Israel into the Promised Land. Certainly the Mayan-Toltec civilization of the New Empire bore very strong resemblances to the Aztec Empire of Mexico and was rather unlike the Mayan Old Empire. There was the prevalence of human sacrifice, for one thing. Old Vivero wasn't wrong about that.'
'So Uaxuanoc was inhabited at the time of Vivero? I mean, ignoring his letter and going by the historical evidence.'
'Oh, yes. But don't get me wrong when I talk of empires. The New Empire had broken up by the time the Spaniards arrived. There were just a lot of petty states and warring provinces which banded together into an uneasy alliance to resist the Spaniards. It may have been the Spaniards who gave the final push, but the system couldn't have lasted much longer in any case.'
Halstead had been listening and a bored look on his face. This was all old stuff to him and he was becoming restive. He said, When do we start on it?'
Fallon pondered. 'Well have to have quite a big organization there on the site. It's going to take a lot of men to clear that forest.'
He was right about that. It had taken three man-days to clear enough ground for a helicopter to land, piloted by a very skilful man. To clear a hundred acres with due archeological care was going to take a small army a hell of a long time.
He said, 'I think we'll abandon this camp now and pull back to Camp One. I'll get Joe Rudetsky busy setting up Camp Three on the site. Now we can get a helicopter in it shouldn't prove too difficult. We'll need quarters for twenty men to start with, I should think. It will take at least a fortnight to get settled in.'
'Why wait until then?' asked Halstead impatiently. 'I can get a lot of work done while that's going on. The rainy season isn't far off.'
'We'll get the logistics settled first,' said Fallon sharply. 'It will save time in the long run.'
'The hell with that!' said Halstead. 'I'm going to go up there and have a look round anyway. I'll leave you to run your goddamn logistics.' He leaned forward. 'Can't you see what's waiting to be picked up there -- right on the ground? Even Wheale stumbled over something important first crack out of the box, only he was too dumb to see what it was.
'It's been there thirteen hundred years,' said Fallon. 'It will still be there in another three weeks -- when we can go about the job properly.'
'Well, I'm going to do a preliminary survey,' said Halstead stubbornly.
'No, you're not,' said Fallon definitely. 'And I'll tell you why you're not. Nobody is going to take you -- I'll see to that. Unless you're prepared to take a stroll through the forest.'
'Damn you!' said Halstead violently. He turned to his wife. 'You wouldn't believe me, would you? You've been hypnotized by what Wheale's been telling you. Can't you see he wants to keep it to himself; that he wants first publication?'
'I don't give a damn about first publication,' said Fallon energetically. 'All I want is for the job to be done properly. You don't start excavating a city in the manner of a grave-robber.'
Their voices were rising, so I said, 'Let's keep this quiet, shall we?'
Halstead swung on me, and his voice cracked. 'You keep out of this. You've been doing me enough damage as it is -- crawling to my wife behind my back and turning her against me. You're all against me -- the lot of you.'
'Nobody's against you,' said Fallon. 'If we were against you, you wouldn't be here at all.'
I cut in fast. 'And any more of this bloody nonsense and you'll be out right now. I don't see why we have to put up with you. so just put a sock in it and act like a human being.'
I thought he was going to hit me. His chair went over with a crash as he stood up. 'For Christ's sake!' he said furiously, and stamped out of the hut.
