Sky Coyote (6 page)

I
T TOOK ME ABOUT TWO
days to recover from Theobromine poisoning, but after that I had a swell vacation. I watched a lot of cinema. Played a lot of tennis. Watched serene Mayans putting up holiday decorations to which they had absolutely no cultural connection. Ate many tasty meals at the several excellent restaurants provided for my dining pleasure. Went to three holiday parties and won a door prize at one of them (bottle of aftershave). Looked up a number of old pals I hadn’t seen in centuries. They hadn’t changed at all (big surprise!).

Also, I accessed the code strips relating to my upcoming assignment. They gave me a lot of research material to integrate and store in my tertiary consciousness. They also gave me a duty I was not looking forward to.

I was returning my racquet to the Mayan attendant one afternoon when I was dumb enough to ask, “How do I get to the Botany Department from here?”

He looked over my shoulder and whistled. I turned to see four big Indians swerve in my direction and set down the sedan chair
they had been carrying. “The Son of Heaven wishes to go to the Botany Department,” he told them.

“Okay,” they replied in unison, and before I could say a word in protest, they had done a neatly synchronized dip and the attendant had picked me up bodily and shot-putted me into the passenger compartment, so smoothly the other passenger wasn’t even jostled. “Well, hi there.” Mendoza smiled at my discomposure. “Happy Solstice Season.”

“Hi.” I braced myself as the chair was lifted, but it rose smooth as anything and just flew off. You couldn’t have known there were straining mortal muscles or a drop of mortal sweat connected with the motion in any way.

“Don’t you find this just a little embarrassing?” I asked her, struggling to get comfortable.

“I used to.” Mendoza yawned elaborately. “Nowadays I just say what the hell and ride. It’s easier than arguing with them, and they find it so fulfilling.”

“Fulfilling?” I looked down on the nodding plumes.

“I think they enjoy debasing themselves. What else is there for them to do around here, after all? They’re decadent. We’re decadent. Everybody’s decadent at New World One. Here, have some Theobromos.” She proffered a bar with an ironical gesture.

Irony or not, I accepted. Enough time had passed since that fatal brunch for me to be able to look at the stuff again, and besides, even with the ordinary formula, New World One has the best you can get anywhere and you never, never turn it down when it’s offered. Nectar and ambrosia, baby. I leaned back in the chair and felt my spirits rise.

“Yes, this is an amazing place. Kind of confining, though, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Mendoza raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“All this manicured luxury, I mean. I’ll be glad to get out in the field again, personally.”

“That’s right, your California trip.” She looked out idly at the passing scenery. “Fun with Stone Age people. Have you found out more about it?”

“I’ve had some briefing, yes.”

“How nice for you. Why were you going over to Botany?” Such a cold black stare she had.

“Oh, just to look over one or two things connected with the job,” I lied.

“Hey!” Her eyes suddenly came to life. “You can see my work.”

My heart sank. “Gee, that would be interesting,” I lied further. “So you’ve got a garden or something? I didn’t think you worked with any actual green plants anymore.”

“I do compilation and analysis of other operatives’ field specimens, but everybody’s allowed some private projects. And look, here we are at Botany! Come on.” She fairly leaped from the sedan chair before the bearers had set it all the way down.

“Happy Holidays. We must remind the Daughter of Heaven to remain within the conveyance until it has stopped moving,” one of the bearers informed her in aggrieved tones.

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved a hand, not looking back. I followed her, thanking God she wasn’t something like an entomologist.

Botany was less a pyramid and more a toppled megalith, long and low. We went through it past the labs and offices and out into the back, where a vast field was surrounded on three sides by pink stucco walls. I had figured on a greenhouse or something, which was kind of a silly expectation in the tropics. Under the open sky grew fruits and vegetables of obscene size, enough to fill the salad bars at the many excellent restaurants available for my dining pleasure and then some.

“Now, get a load of this.” Mendoza hitched up her skirts and led me across the rows to a double line of green stalks. “Look at these big guys.”

“You’re still fooling around with maize?” She’d been doing that back in 1554.

“I could never quite give up on it. It’s so beautiful, see, but the stuff is worthless as a food staple. Well, nearly. Compared to soybeans or oats or wheat. Far less nourishing. And the bigger and more golden you make it, the less food value it generally has, even when you develop high-lysine varieties. But look at this
Zea mays
and look at these primitive varieties over here, these are cultivars that were abandoned because their yield was low or they were difficult to hull, and look at the oldest one here, teosinte,” she said it like a saint’s name. “If you analyze its genetic structure, you know what you find?”

I was afraid she was going to tell me. She did, too, for the next forty-five minutes.

“… so one day, one fine day when I’ve perfected it, this specimen’s descendant will leap from the stalk, rip open his husk, and yell, ‘Here I am! Supergrain! More nourishing than a speeding ear of triticale!’ And it’ll all be my work.” She fondled the golden tassels with such intimacy, I had to look away.

“But you haven’t limited yourself to maize, have you? If I remember right, you used to be a real whiz on all the New World grains and other related stuff.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Like for example, you’d know about the kind of grain the Native Americans in California eat.”

“Well, they don’t eat grain up there exactly, their main analogous staples are acorns and chia—” She broke off and swung around to look at me, terrible suspicion in her eyes. “Why, Joseph?”

“No, no, I’ve got good news. Trust me. You remember back when you were just out of school, when you filled out a certain form PF215?”

“Personal Goals and Preferences,” she responded, and then her mouth fell open and stayed that way. “Ohhhh…”

“And you
said
, I mean, you know, it was you who filled this thing out, you did your best to convince the graduation board that you ought to be sent to the New World to work on its flora in remote areas, because you were this super expert on New World grains, and—”

“No! No, no, no! That was in 1554!”

“And you’ve been drafted for the California project, and that’s how it is, babe.”

If any of those giant zucchini had connected, I’d have been seriously bruised.

A
S YOU MAY HAVE GATHERED
, Mendoza is not the kind of woman to waste time on petty things like forgiveness. But somehow she rose above her inclinations enough to let me download the briefing material she’d need for her assignment. Maybe it was the fact that it was that festive time of year when old grudges are put aside, mistletoe is hung, the smell of gingerbread and Yule logs perfumes the air, and slaves get to whack their masters on the head with inflated pig bladders. Maybe it was the fact that she really did love her work more than anything else (or anything at all). Anyhow we saw more of each other as the century rolled through its final days, assembling our field kits and swapping bits of information that might prove useful on the job.

It was Mendoza who pointed out to me that observing our Mayans would teach me absolutely nothing about the Indians we were going to work with, just as studying Swedish farmers would teach me nothing about Turkish soldiers. Different continent, different nation, different culture, different experiences. It’s a point non-Americans tend to miss, and what did I know? I’d been based
in the Old World all my life. Well, most of my life. I had all those access codes to clue me in, though, and I was an expert in no time.

So, though you couldn’t call our relationship cordial, we wound up going to the Grand Fin de Siècle Cotillion on New Year’s Eve together.

“Wait here, guys, okay?” I hopped nimbly from the sedan chair as soon as the Mayans set it down. The lead bearer inclined graciously. I tossed him a couple of drink tokens by way of a tip and went into Botany Residential, adjusting my wig.

“Hokay, Natasha, honeybunch, your ride is here,” I called cheerfully, ringing the buzzer.

“You’re early,” Mendoza told me, opening the door long enough for me to step inside. She turned and went back to packing a garment bag with what looked like fifty pounds of white silk petticoat. She herself was all dolled up in ballroom best, absolutely the latest Paris fashion rendered in tropical-weight cream shantung, though she hadn’t yet put on the elaborately heeled shoes (higher than mine) of Italian calfskin. They were lined up neatly by the side of the bed, next to her field kit and duffel.

“I’m always early. Catches people off guard,” I replied, looking around. The place was emptier than a hotel room, though she’d been living in it for over a century. She’d packed up, but the staff hadn’t yet been in to vacuum, so there were dust rectangles on the console where her field notebooks had been and two dust outlines on the wall where pictures had hung. From a hook dangled a single strand of spangly holiday decoration. It had broken when she pulled it down and was too high up the wall to bother with. “Boy, I hate moving during the holidays,” I said sympathetically. She shrugged and zipped the bag shut, subduing all those waves of silk.

“I passed the Grand Ballroom on the way over here,” I continued. “Brother! What an engineering stunt
that
is.”

“Isn’t it?” She sat on the edge of the bed and fished around for her shoes. “Whole thing goes up like a hallucination in twenty-four hours. You haven’t even seen the inside yet. That’s his big specialty; Houbert earned his first credits designing portable field shelters like palaces. He’s a genius, under all the aesthete crap.”

“I guess so!”

“Not that I’ll miss him.” She pushed her feet into her shoes and stood up, looming over me. “Let’s get out of here. Revelry and merriment await us.”

W
HETHER THEY DID OR NOT
, I was sure impressed by the Grand Ballroom. It looked real, and permanent, until you got close enough through the traffic jam of sedan chairs and saw that the whole massive thing was just a white tent—though on a scale that made Barnum and Bailey’s biggest effort look like a field bivvy. Carved cantilevers ten stories high circled around the outside, gleaming with gold leaf, and scarlet pennants fluttered from the dome, and the whole business glowed with interior lighting like a fairy castle.

“Wow” was all I could say. Mendoza clambered out of the chair ahead of me, unimpressed.

“Come on. I want a drink.”

We joined the milling throng and flowed inside with everybody else, where I had the shock of discovering that this was a two-level tent. On the ground floor were a bar, hatcheck booth, retiring area, and kitchens, all gorgeously appointed in a central chamber. Around the perimeter ran a couple of long sloping ramps leading up to the second floor, curtained in swags of sea-green satin. Gaping, I followed Mendoza as she beelined for the
bar, and soon we were on our way up the ramp with a margarita each and so many other immortals, you couldn’t hear yourself think for all the subvocal chatter.