Other Time Page 4

  Now that he thought about it, it needn't even be an Indian or, for that matter, a Spaniard. Suppose he shot a rabbit? As a result, the literally millions of descendants of that rabbit would never be born. Perhaps, as a result, thousands of coyotes, who largely feed on rabbits, would be kept from their ordinary diet. Perhaps, as a result, they would turn to pulling down lambs or kid goats. And, as a result of that, the owners would be thrown into destruction— with all the developments that might mean, including revolution.

  To take it from another view, suppose he managed to survive and impregnate one of these Indian women, or Spanish, assuming there were any Spanish women in the camp and he vaguely recalled from his history that there were a few. That would mean that his descendants, by the time the twentieth century rolled around, might number hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands who hadn't been there, actually, when he lived in the twentieth century. Might some of them be presidents, great inventors, statesmen, generals, or others who shaped the destinies of men? If so, his world would no longer be the world he knew. They would have altered it.

  And suppose ...

  He drifted off, at long merciful last, into sleep.

  Chapter Four

  He was awakened by a fumbling at the holster of his pistol.

  Taking a note from the fact that the burly Diego de Ordaz had seen fit to sleep fully clothed, even to his steel breastplate, and with sword in hand, Don Fielding had retained all of his own clothing, save his bush jacket, which he had folded over his head in the way of a pillow. The weather in August, in this part of Mexico, was hot and humid since, after all, it was the tropics. There was a cooling breeze off the sea, but it was still hot.

  For a brief moment, when he awoke, he didn't know where he was and the room was pitch dark; however, before he thought it out, he grabbed the hand before it could wrestle the gun out. At least he grabbed a wrist, and his first thought was that it must be that of a woman due to its size.

  "Who's that?" he barked.

  A tremulous voice answered, "It is Orteguilla, page of the Captain-General, Don Fielding. He has sent me to invite you to dine with his captains."

  Don held on to the wrist for the time. His eyes were already becoming used to the dark. Outside, it was night, but there were plenty of stars in the sky and the mat at the door had been pushed aside for more air. He could make out the other now. It was the eleven-year-old who had been present when Sandoval had introduced him to Cortes and the others. He had thought at the time that the youngster's eyes had a shifty something in them.

  The boy whined, "Please, Don Fielding. It was so dark; I knew not where I was touching you." He tried to pull his arm away.

  "You lie, niño." However, he turned the other loose and sat up on his improvised bed. "Where is this supper to be?"

  "In the room next to the one in which you met the Captain-General. It is to begin in half an hour, Don Fielding." The boy scampered to his feet and darted out the door.

  The night was cooling off. Don stood and got back into his jacket. Nature was beginning to call and he wondered what the Indians did in the way of providing toilet facilities. Certainly, there couldn't be any sewage system in a building as primitive as this. He was to find later that they used ceramic slop buckets, the contents of which were taken each day out into the fields to be utilized as fertilizer. The Spanish, however, had dug latrines, military-style, not liking the stench of the buckets in the rooms in which they slept.

  He left the room and walked around behind the rectangular building without meeting anyone along the way, although he could still see a considerable number of the Spanish soldiery milling about the enclosure. For want of a better place to do his business, he relieved himself up against the wall.

  In half an hour he would be confronting Hernando Cortes again. Meanwhile, he had time to kill. There was a set of stone steps leading up to the top of the wall which enclosed the giant courtyard. The night was cooling and beautiful. He ascended the steps with the idea of looking out over the town and getting a clearer picture of it. He could make out a figure at the northwest comer. One of the sentries? But, no, the other wore a woman's clothing.

  He shrugged and approached. One of the natives, undoubtedly. He was somewhat surprised that the Spanish allowed them on the walls. He was going to pass her and walk on.

  She turned and looked at him and he realized that it was Malinche, or, as the Spanish called her now that she had been baptized, Dona Marina. She acted as an interpreter for Captain-General Cortes.

  Before thinking, he said to her in Nahuatl, "Good evening. It is a beautiful night." Then felt like biting his tongue. He had intended to keep his knowledge of the language a secret, at least for the time being.

  She was surprised and cocked her head slightly to look at him. "It is the newcomer, Don Fielding. But you speak my mother tongue."

  "Yes," he said. For some reason he knew not, he decided to be frank with her. "However, I would rather you not tell the Captain-General, or anyone else, for that matter."

  She frowned. Now that he was more used to the night light, he could make out the beauty of her face. She had a generous, good mouth, eyes as soft and dark as those of a deer, braided hair, its very blackness accented by the fact that her complexion was almost as fair as Don's own and considerably more so than a good many of the Spanish. Beyond good looks, she had an elusive attractiveness Don couldn't quite put a finger upon, something possibly based on pride, but it added to her desirability.

  She said, "But why do you not wish my lord, the Captain-General, to know? He would be delighted to have your services as an interpreter. I am afraid I am inferior, since I know so few words of Spanish."

  "Possibly because I am not sure that I trust these Spaniards. They are greedy, rapacious, vicious, and cruel. And they are here in Mexico for no good cause ... from the viewpoint of you inhabitants of this land."

  "But you are Spanish yourself!"

  "No. I am a white man, but not Spanish. I am an American."

  "I have never heard of that tribe. But you are wrong about the Captain-General, who does me the honor of having taken me to his bed. He comes to this land to bring the new gods, Mary and her Babe. The old gods were evil, especially those of the Tenochas such as Huitzilopochtli to whom the priests sacrifice large numbers."

  Don Fielding considered himself an agnostic, to which he usually added with atheistic tendencies. He said, "All gods are evil, since they are the inventions of men. If they do not begin evil, they are soon corrupted by their priests who supposedly interpret their desires."

  The girl's chin went up slightly. "Not Mary and the Babe. They are pure."

  "Perhaps," Don said sarcastically. "But at this very time, over in Spain, hundreds of people are being tortured and burnt to death in the name of your Mother and Child. They call it the Inquisition. In their name, also, dozens of wars will be fought by rivaling sects and hundreds of thousands killed—men, women, and children."

  The chin was higher. "I do not believe it."

  "No, of course not. However, let me tell you. Primarily, your Spanish are here for gold, which they value above all else, in spite of their religious protestations. They also seek land to convert into feudalistic fiefs and to enslave your people."

  "Enslave?" she said.

  "An institution you are not as yet aware of in this country, although the germ of it is beginning to appear in the tlacotli. Your more advanced societies are just beginning to establish classes. They aren't quite here yet, but you're on the verge."

  She frowned. "I do not understand."

  "No, of course not. No more than an ancient Greek could have understood feudalism or than a feudalistic baron could have understood the workings of the classical capitalism of the early twentieth century. It just didn't make sense to them."

  "I ... I do not understand, Don Fielding, even though you speak Nahuatl, some of the words..."

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  She said worriedly, "Even though I interpre
t for my lord, the Captain-General, some of the things he wishes to explain I do not understand. What is a vassal? What is a king? What is a noble? What is a fief? What is an emperor?" Don Fielding snorted despair. He looked at his watch. "Dona Marina, Malinche, it would take me a dozen evenings to begin to explain the differences between your ways and those of the Spanish—if I ever could. How long have you been with them now?"

  "Many moons. I was born in Jaltipan, where we speak Nahuatl. However, when I was but a child, I was stolen by some wicked pochteca traders who were on their way through the town and taken to Tabasco and traded to become a tlacotli servant girl. There they speak the Mayan tongue, and of course I learned it. Then I was given to the teteuh."

  "The who?"

  "The teteuh, the gods."

  "Ah. The Spanish. I thought the word was teules."

  "So the Captain-General and the other Spanish pronounce it. We say teteuh."

  "Go on."

  "With the Captain-General was Aguilar, a countryman who had been shipwrecked in the Mayan country years ago and who had learned the Mayan tongue. So now he speaks both Mayan and Spanish, and I speak both Mayan and Nahuatl, the language of most of this land. So it is that my lord, the Captain-General, can communicate by telling Aguilar what he wishes to say, in Spanish. Aguilar tells me what he said in Mayan, and then I am able to translate that into Nahuatl."

  Don Fielding closed his eyes in pain. "What a way to communicate. Have none of these bravos bothered to learn the language of the country they are trying to conquer?" She looked at him, her face blank. "But they are teteuhs." He said urgently, "Now listen to what I have to say, Malinche, because your future depends upon it. The Spanish place more importance on what they call noble birth than anything else. More than ability, or achievement, or education, even more than money, although those who achieve enough money usually wrangle a way to become aristocrats."

  "Aristocrats?"

  "The same as nobles. Now listen to me. You must let them know that you are a princess."

  "Princess? What is a princess?"

  He groaned. "Something you don't know about here in Mexico."

  "Mexico?"

  "Listen to me, damn it." The "damn it" was in English, but he had no equivalent term in Nahuatl. "You are going to have to tell them that you are the daughter of nobles, rulers. You are a princess. When you were a child, you were the heiress of large areas, but your jealous mother, wishing to marry another man after your father's death and give him your inheritance, sold you into slavery. You are a princess."

  She was at sea. "But there is no such thing as a 'princess' here."

  "Don't worry about that. The Spanish will invent the equivalent. They can't think in other terms. There have to be kings and queens and nobles and princesses and all the rest of it. That's the way it is in Europe and they simply can't think in any other terms. That's where all these words that confuse you come from. In their viewpoint, there have to be vassals and nobles, kings and commoners, kingdoms and empires, rather than just tribes."

  She was utterly confused.

  He pursued it. "Haven't you seen that some of the teteuhs, as you call them, consider themselves better than others? How some rule it over the others? Men like Cortes and Sandoval and Ordaz are nobles, are dons. The others are commoners and must obey them."

  "Yes," she said worriedly.

  "In your society, your chiefs are elected. In theirs, they are born into command. So what you must tell them is that you, too, are noble. You are a princess. You were sold into slavery by a cruel mother."

  "My mother was not cruel."

  He groaned despair. "That has nothing to do with it. This Spanish generation is that of Cervantes...."

  "Cervantes?"

  "A Spanish storyteller who satirized his generation of romantics in a book called Don Quixote. That means nothing to you. However, if you establish yourself as a Mexican princess, then, when it comes time for marriage, you will be able to wed with a noble. Believe me, it makes a difference. You are on top of the social heap, rather than the squaw of a drunken foot soldier. Believe me, Malinche, you now share the bed of Hernando Cortes, but he will betray you as he will betray everyone to his own ends. He will throw you contemptuously to one of his junior officers, or someone even lower, if they think you less than an Indian noble."

  "How do you know?"

  "History tells me so."

  "Who is history?"

  He looked at her in frustration. "I am afraid I can't explain."

  "You are a magician that you can see into the future?" She held her arms tight against her sides in a feminine reaction to something she feared.

  He remained silent for a long moment. Then: "Yes, I suppose that in your eyes I am a magician. I can see into the future ... I think."

  In truth, he didn't know. Was this world in which he found himself exactly the same as his own? Was everything going to happen exactly the way it had in his history? If so, how explain his own presence here? How explain the tilings he had gone over to himself before dropping off to sleep the night before? What would happen to world history if he pulled out his automatic right this minute and shot the famed Malinche, "the tongue," as the Indians called her, of the conquering Cortes, the alter ego behind the Spanish occupation?

  "I am afraid of magicians, Don Fielding," she said. "You need not be of this one," he said gently, even as he looked at his wristwatch. "I'll have to go now. I am to have dinner with the Captain-General and his officers."

  He turned and went over to the stone steps and down them. As he walked toward the temple where he had met Cortes earlier in the day, he wondered if the girl, had she truly known what lay ahead, would have deserted the Spanish. Or was she so infatuated with them that she would be willing to betray her own race to its destruction?

  There were still a few Spanish wandering around the enclosure, but no Indians, He soon discovered why. A monstrous mastiff came bounding toward him, growling ferociously. He dropped his hand to the butt of his gun, but even as he did so, he knew that the small calibered bullet the weapon fired would never stop the heavy dog in time. Not unless he, by pure chance, hit it in some such spot as an eye.

  He spoke, as soothingly as he could, in Spanish, and the dog skidded to a halt and puzzlement came over its ugly face. It obviously didn't recognize the clothing, but the voice and possibly the smell were those of its Spanish masters. Undoubtedly, Don realized, these dogs were turned loose at night in the enclosure, and pity any but the Spaniards that were caught by them. He imagined that Malinche and the Spanish women were the only exceptions. The trainers undoubtedly had gone to pains to introduce her and the other women to the war dogs.

  He walked on, keeping a watch on the animal from the side of his eyes. However, he had been accepted.

  He ascended the steps to the temple and found two footmen with pikes standing guard at one of the doors. Inside, he could hear the noises of a group.

  He entered a room possibly forty-five feet long by fifteen deep, somewhat larger but otherwise identical to the one where Cortes had received him earlier. The furniture consisted of an improvised table and folding wooden chairs, obviously military rather than Indian, to seat possibly twenty. The room was lit by two large candles, undoubtedly Spanish, sitting on the table.

  Standing about the room, cups in hand, were the twenty— eighteen soldiers, including the Captain-General, and two in the robes of priests. Don recognized one of the latter as Fray Olmedo. He also recognized Sandoval and Ordaz. The others, except for Hernando Cortes, were strangers. All wore armor and carried their swords. Sandoval half raised his cup in a gesture of greeting to the newcomer.

  Cortes came up, his face radiating amiability, and patted Don on the arm. "Ah, our good Don Fielding." He turned to the others. "Gentlemen, I present Don Fielding who comes from that far country to the north."

  They had fallen silent at his entrance and Don got the feeling that they had been discussing him. That was hardly surprising.

 
Cortes himself took up another cup from the table and poured from a glass decanter into it. He handed it to Don and raised his own again.

  "A sip of wine before we eat, Don Fielding. My faith, there is little enough of it left. This cursed land has no wine, save a horrible concoction they call pulque, and no spirits at all. This wine comes all the way from Spain. To be exact, from Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia."

  Don Fielding took a sip and found it nutty and strong. An ancestor of sherry, it would be, if it came from Jerez.

  The Captain-General took him by the arm and led him about, introducing him to the others. There were too many of them for Don to retain all of the names, and most of them, with their beards and almost identical armor, looked so much alike that they were hard to distinguish as individuals. However, a few stood out.

  There were five of the Alvarados, but Pedro de Alvarado, who was evidently second in army command, was the only one that particularly impressed himself upon Don Fielding. He was in his early thirties, taller than the average of the Spaniards present, going possibly five foot eight, was crowned with as flaming red hair as Don could ever remember seeing, was more flashily dressed than his companions, and had a swaggering, swashbuckling air. His bow, when Don was introduced, was a grand flourish.

  Then there was Alonzo de Avila, noteworthy because of his quiet dignity, and Cristobal de Olid, aggressive and fierce in appearance. Don got the feeling that this one would be as dangerous to tangle with as anyone present. The second priest was Padre Juan Diaz, a younger man and obviously the junior of Fray Olmedo so far as the expedition was concerned.

  Introductions over, Cortes waved them all to the table, occupying the head of it himself and insisting that Don Fielding take the place of honor at his right side. The American couldn't help feeling a certain tenseness in the air. Covert glances were shot at him from time to time, particularly by Alvarado and Olid. Sandoval, to the contrary, seemed to be secretly amused.