Eye of the Forest (23 page)

Nimrod nodded. “As usual, you reduce things to their absolute common denominator. But that’s about the size of it, Groanin, yes. In a nutshell.”

“But that’s just the point,” said Groanin. “The size of it. There’s tons of uranium down there. I mean if one flipping baseball can destroy a city the size of Hiroshima, then —”

“The
Pachacuti,”
said Philippa. “The Incan prophecy. Talk about global warming. Wow!”

“Exactly,” said Nimrod. “They could destroy the whole world.”

Everyone stayed silent for a long while as they tried to contemplate the terrible consequences of what McCreeby and Dybbuk were planning to do. It was John who spoke first.

“I’m no good at making speeches,” he said. “But it seems to me that with something as important to the future of the planet as this, Dad is going to have to take his chances with his kidnappers.” He picked up his backpack. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my dad. But we’ve simply got to go through the door in the Eye of the Forest and go after those loonies. We’ve got to stop them before they manage to blow up the planet.”

“John’s right,” said Nimrod, hoisting up his own backpack. Catching Philippa’s anxious eye, he added, “We can’t afford to wait to hear from your mother, Philippa. We’ve got to go after them. Now.”

She nodded silently.

“Groanin? Muddy? You two had better stay here and wait for Sicky to return.”

Groanin gave Nimrod a look. “Leave me behind? I should
say not, sir. I’m a butler, not an umbrella. Besides, you might have need of me. Not to mention my arm. Since it was kindly replaced by your niece and nephew, I can do a lot more than make a good cup of tea, you know. Just as long as you don’t ask me to chuck a baseball at someone.”

S
icky’s head may have been unusually small, but there was nothing wrong with his social skills. He may have had long red laces strung from his lips, but he still liked to talk to his clients. He liked people. Even when they were mummified people. And it was only natural that in the time it took for him to lead the mummified Inca kings through the jungle to the camp of the Xuanaci Indians, he should have tried to offer them some interesting conversation. Sicky tried to talk about the weather, tourists, the local fauna, Fidel Castro, carbon trading, the Xuanaci, the Shining Path guerrillas, deforestation, the Incas, the conquistadors — he even tried to talk about the dreadful state of Peruvian soccer.

“You’re all Peruvian,” he said gamely. “Doesn’t it bother you that we’re the third-largest country in South America and yet we can’t field a decent national team? It sure bothers
me. I mean, we haven’t qualified for the World Cup since 1982. Argentina is only a bit bigger than us, and they’re one of the best soccer countries in the world.”

If any of the Inca kings cared about soccer and the fortunes of the Peruvian national team, they didn’t show it. Their eyes remained nearly closed while their squashed-up, ash-gray faces stayed as impassive as Easter Island statues. Very occasionally, Sicky thought he saw one of them smiling but that was always just the teeth in the skull showing rather horribly through the mummy’s parchment-thin skin. As they walked silently through the steamy jungle, Sicky doubted that the kings were even capable of speech, and the discovery that they could indeed talk was just one of many surprises that lay ahead of him.

The first of these surprises was the existence of an animal Sicky had never seen before. In a forest clearing, they came upon a herd of what looked like a variety of tapir — a large piglike mammal with a short prehensile proboscis or trunk that is indigenous to South America. Except that these were about twice as big as any tapir Sicky had seen in all his many years as a jungle guide. Not only that, but these creatures had tusks and resembled small mastodons, or prehistoric elephants, as much as they resembled large tapirs.

Just as surprising to Sicky was the discovery that these animals were quite tame, for they permitted the mummified kings to mount them like horses and, hardly wishing to walk when his taciturn companions seemed more inclined to
ride, Sicky took hold of one beast by the thick hair at the base of its neck and hoisted himself onto its back. After this, they made swift and easy progress through the forest, and before long, Sicky was quite certain that the sudden discovery of these strange and ancient-looking beasts was connected with the appearance of the mummified Inca kings.

“So what is this animal we’re mounted on?” he asked the nearest Inca king as his mount bulldozed a small tree out of the way. “It looks kind of rare. Maybe even extinct. Like them dinosaurs in that movie.”

No reply. But Sicky wasn’t taking no reply for an answer.

“Some kind of prehistoric tapir, is it? An elephant perhaps? It sure is comfortable. I’ll give you that. Up here I feel like that old Carthaginian general, Hannibal. The one who rode across the Alps on the elephants to conquer the Romans. I suppose that’s the idea, is it? To use these beasts to give you a bit of an edge in a fight?”

Nearing the Xuanaci village, Sicky heard the unmistakable sounds of a bitter conflict that was in progress and, standing upon the sturdy back of his mount, Sicky caught sight of three Spanish horsemen armed with twelve-foot lances, riding through the jungle in pursuit of several fleeing Indians and endeavoring to spear them. In the village itself a pitched battle was in progress with Pizarro’s armor-plated Spaniards and a host of near-naked Xuanaci warriors engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, while close to the center
a group of Spaniards emerged from the largest hut clutching golden vessels and plates and shouting triumphantly to their colleagues. That was also a big surprise to Sicky.

“I never figured the Xuanaci had so much gold,” he said quietly. “Who’d have thought it possible? No wonder they were always so fierce. Probably scared that someone was going to steal all their treasures.”

“Which ones are the Xuanaci?”

The Inca king nearest Sicky had spoken and was now looking at him directly for the first time. There was a curious glow in his eyes, like a dimly burning electric lightbulb, while his voice sounded similarly incandescent, as if it had been smoked over a slowly burning fire.

“You spoke,” said Sicky. “I do believe you spoke.”

“Certainly I spoke,” said the mummified Inca king. His fellow kings were all looking at Sicky now, as if waiting for his answer. “We were ordered to help the Xuanaci. By the young master.”

“You mean that kid, John?”

“Yes. John. We came back from the
hana-paca,
the upper world, where food and warmth were plentiful. We came back to send our enemies to the
okho-paca,
the place of unending cold. The young lord and son of the sun commands and we obey. Tell us now, llama dung, which of these are the Xuanaci?”

Sicky didn’t much like being described as llama dung, especially after all the trouble he’d taken to guide the kings to the Xuanaci village, and he was half inclined to tell the
mummified Inca king to go and boil his head. But at the same time he was anxious to finish the job of guiding this strange party and to get back to Nimrod and the children.

“Er, Your Majesty, the Xuanaci are the ones painted like jaguars,” he said. “That’s the big cat, not the car, of course. Ain’t no call to look like a luxury sedan in the jungle. Nor any call to own one, neither.”

As more Spanish horses galloped about, several Xuanaci women and children screamed as they tried to flee the pandemonium. Many of the more sensible ones started to climb trees and creepers in order to escape. Some managed it and some didn’t.

“Usually the Xuanaci are pretty good fighters, but as you can see — I think — them Spaniards are armed to the teeth, and mounted on horseback, which makes them pretty hard to kill. Not to mention the fact that they are already dead, of course. It’s not so easy to kill a fellow who’s been dead for nigh on five hundred years, even for people as mean as the Xuanaci.”

As if to demonstrate the truth of what Sicky was saying a Xuanaci war hatchet flew through the air and neatly beheaded one of the mounted conquistadors, who carried on riding and waving his lance as if the loss of his head was a matter of small inconvenience.

The decapitated head bounced in the undergrowth and, still wearing its distinctive Cabasset helmet, rolled all the way to Sicky’s feet. The guide stared down at the Spaniard’s bearded face. The blue eyes continued to blink, and
the face to move as if it was still attached to the Spaniard’s body. Then, fixing him with a lively, sarcastic smile, it said in a lisping Castilian accent, “What are you looking at, pinhead? Haven’t you ever seen a severed head before?”

“No, nor never seen one that talked back to me, neither,” said Sicky, and booted the head away into the undergrowth. “See what I mean?” he told the Inca king. “The Xuanaci have got their work cut out to beat these dead Spaniards. But I guess you understand how that is, sir, on account of the fact that I guess you are dead yourself.” Sicky shrugged. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, Your Majesty.”

The mummified Inca king did not answer. Instead, he blinked his eyes slowly and raised his spear, which appeared to be a signal to all of the other mummified Inca kings, who tightened their grip on their mounts and their weapons and prepared to charge the greater force of cowardly conquistadors.

“Uh-oh,” said Sicky as the beast he was sitting on snorted excitedly. And hardly trusting it not to follow the rest, Sicky swung his leg over its neck and, not a moment too soon, slipped down its big furry flanks and onto the ground. This was not his fight.

The next second, the Inca kings, urging their mounts forward with fierce and ululating war cries, attacked the conquistadors, who hardly knew what hit them; such was the ferocity of the first attack that the heads of several dead Spaniards were soon bouncing like soccer balls along the
jungle floor, although with no more lethal result than the conquistador whom Sicky had seen beheaded earlier on.

“This looks like it’s going to be a long battle,” said Sicky and, in the absence of his paleomastodon — for that was the name of the beast he had been mounted upon — Sicky was obliged to climb to the top of a tree to get a clearer view of the action. Which was where he encountered several howler monkeys, a three-toed sloth, and those members of the Xuanaci who, very sensibly, had run away when the Spaniards showed up “to teach them a lesson.”

Much to Sicky’s relief, the many Xuanaci who were hiding in the tree recognized that it was he who had brought the mummified Inca kings to help them and, as a result, greeted him like a liberator.

“At first we tried to fight them,” said one of the Xuanaci people. “But when we realized that they couldn’t actually be killed, we ran away.”

“You can’t kill them because they’re already dead,” explained Sicky.

“Ah, that explains it,” said the Xuanaci. “And then you turned up with these other warriors. And I must say they fight very well. With no heed for their own safety.”

“They’re dead, too,” said Sicky.

“Ah, that explains it.”

The Xuanaci speaking to Sicky, a man named Nicnax, recognized Sicky, on account of the small size of his head, and now apologized for what the Xuanaci had done to Sicky and said it was all the fault of their chief Pertinax.

“He was a very bad chief,” said Nicnax. “He was always telling us that your tribe, the Prozuanaci, wanted to go to war with us and made us very afraid of you. It was he who wanted us to go around collecting human heads and to eat people. Myself, I have never liked eating people all that much.” Nicnax shook his head and sighed. “No doubt about it. Pertinax was a very bad man.”

“Was?” repeated Sicky. “You said ‘was.’”

“Pertinax and his two witch doctors, Chenax and Condonax, are dead,” said Nicnax. “The conquistadors killed them first. They might have killed all of us perhaps but for the very timely help of your Incan warriors, Sicky.”

Sicky and Nicnax watched as, immediately under the tree they were hiding in, one of the conquistadors cut off the head of an Inca king and, in turn, had his own head cut off. The two then proceeded to hack at each other with swords, although most of the time they missed because they couldn’t see anything at all. Just occasionally they hit each other and managed to sever an arm or a leg. But there was no blood. As battles went, it was one of the most bloodless bloodthirsty battles Sicky had ever seen.

“How long do you think this battle will last?” said Nicnax.

“Difficult question,” said Sicky, “given that the two armies are made up of dead people. But you know something, Nicnax? It occurs to me that the world would best be served if all wars were fought by dead soldiers. And then nobody could get killed.”

“You’re a very wise man, Sicky,” said Nicnax.

Sicky yawned and scratched his grapefruit-sized head. “Not really. It’s just that when you people shrunk my head, my thoughts got more, well, concentrated. I used to wonder why that was. And now I know it’s because most people have more brains than ever they need. You see, when God made man, he made him with a brain that’ll be big enough to cope with all the stuff he’s going to need to know in about a million years’ time. Which’ll be a lot, of course. But right now, people don’t need ninety percent of the brain they’ve got. Not for watching TV and basketball and rap music and things that don’t require any thinking at all. Me, I’ve got exactly as much brain as I need and no more. Which means I never have a surplus thought. And I never have to think about a lot of stuff that ain’t ever going to happen.” Sicky smiled. “You don’t know it, but you people actually did me a favor.”

Nicnax nodded thoughtfully, impressed by Sicky’s great wisdom. “Look here,” he said. “Now that Pertinax is dead, we Xuanaci need a new chief. And you sound like you might be the very man for the top job. Everyone is very tired of being warlike and fierce. All we want is to live in peace with our neighbors. So how would you feel about that?”

Before answering, Sicky thought about the idea very carefully. He rather enjoyed being a jungle guide. At the same time he felt a greater responsibility to his tribe, and to all the peoples of the upper Amazon. For years, the Prozuanaci had lived in fear of the Xuanaci. Maybe he could bring them
together. Sicky’s head may have been unusually small, but there was nothing wrong with his sense of civic responsibility.

“Well, there’s a thing,” he said. “Old Sicky the chief of the Xuanaci. I wouldn’t have to wear a crown or nothing like that, would I?” He grinned. “‘Cause my head is too small for most kinds of hats.”

Nicnax grinned back at him. “Pertinax was a real big head. I mean, he really thought he could change the world, you know? I think someone with a much smaller head would be good for us.”

“I can see how that might work,” admitted Sicky.

“And there are some big pluses that come with the job,” added Nicnax.

“Like what?”

“There’s a nice house with a chef and a couple of maids to clean up and stuff. Widescreen TV. Sunken bath. And plenty of gold.”

“Yeah, I saw some of that just now. Hey, I never knew you Xuanaci were so rich.”

“We could never sell it, of course. Most of the gold is early Incan stuff that the Spaniards couldn’t find. Including El Dorado, the famous city of gold that the Spaniards were always looking for.”

“You know where that is?”

“Sure. It’s right here.”

Nicnax turned around and picked up a heavy object wrapped in sackcloth. He unwrapped it to reveal a large
model made of gold and enamel with an ebony base. It was a beautifully made, intricately wrought solid-gold sculpture of Machu Picchu, perfect in every detail.

“El Dorado,” said Nicnax. “Our most precious artifact.”

“This is really it?”

“This is really it.” Nicnax grinned. “I mean it wasn’t called El Dorado when it was made. But, over the years, and for obvious reasons, that’s what people started calling it.