Fred Saberhagen - The Mask of the Sun

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The Mask of the Sun
by Fred Saberhagen
Contents
|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|
Chapter 1. The Raising
^ »
Key West, 1975
It didn't pay to reach too fast for gold.
Better to savor the still-possible dream for a few moments
longer…
At low tide in this part of the Gulf, the white sand bottom was
nowhere more than about ten feet below the surface. A snorkeler
could let his finned feet trail and for a moment imagine himself a
soaring bird, looking down on an unpeopled world and letting his
thoughts roam as wild and fantastic as he liked. When Tom
Gabrieli's eye caught a single faint golden gleam from the trough
of one winding sand-ripple, hardly more than arm's length below,
old habit made him slow his gliding progress to a halt, savoring
the dream still possible, before it turned out to be a yellow metal
beer can dropped last Tuesday.
Then he reached down—the water was little more than four feet
deep just here, and you could hardly call the requisite maneuver a
dive—and brushed away the sand. His fingers touched smooth,
rounded hardness that somehow, before he even tried to move
the thing, gave an impression of substantial weight. Throat
muscles spasmed on his held breath when the first golden
surface, broad and curved as a cheekbone, came into view.
A moment later, he was standing chest deep in water, his
snorkeling mask already pulled off and tossed into the nearby
boat. What he held in his shaking hands was a different kind of
mask, of thick, solid gold, with inlaid squares of ceramic
decoration here and there. Realistic enough to be a life-sized
portrait, with the cheekbones broad and high, and the mouth
curved in a subtle, lordly smile that might have been meant to
express hauteur and hatred instead of joy. The nose was hooked
and decidedly masculine; the nostrils, like the mouth, were closed
as solidly as a statue's. The inlaid eyes, of some white stone or
glass, were a little more prominent than life beneath the heavy
ridge of brow. At each temple, and again in the center of the
upper forehead, were golden flanges pierced with holes, through
which straps or thongs might have been strung—With a surging
splash, Sally came up on the other side of the boat, and clung
there to the gunwale. Her own snorkeling mask was held in one
hand, her blond hair coming out from under its cap, strong
sunbrowned arms and shoulders agleam with water above a
yellow bikini top. Tom glanced at her, then brought his eyes back
to scan the golden mask held in his hands. His senses registered
that Sally was calling something to him, but he could not really
hear a single word… the mask he held would not be wearable, not
with those opaque eyes. Why, then, the places to secure a strap?
Of course it might be funerary; meant to cover eyes no longer
seeing, a face no longer fit for others' sight.
On impulse, he lifted the gold face to his own and found his
chin fitting neatly into an interior hollow while the side flanges
gently clasped his temples. And at once he discovered that the
eyes were not truly opaque. Darkly translucent, they transmitted a
shimmer of faint rainbow light. He vaguely supposed this must be
some result of the sun on the miles of little waves that danced
around him out to the horizon…
"Tom? What in the hell? Tom—?"
This time he heard her plainly. And at the same moment it
flashed on him that someone else, in some distant boat or
aircraft, might be able to see him too—might just possibly be
scanning with binoculars or telephoto lens. He snatched the mask
down from his face and plunged it into concealing water. Holding
it submerged, he turned to scan the horizon.
There were some clouds, and sun-hazed sky, and a million
gentle waves upon the shallow waters. To the east, the nearest of
the Keys made a green smear along the boundary of sea and sky.
Green would be the mangroves along the water's edge,
screening the buildings and other vegetation behind them.
"I found this, Sal." Reluctantly he brought it up again, held it
above the water long enough for her to see.
"Oh, my God!" Sal had climbed into the boat, and was now
leaning out of it on his side to look. Her blue eyes were wide, and
she had pulled off her cap, making her head a blond explosion.
"Is it gold?"
"Just like that… ten times as much as I ever found when I was
in the business. A hundred times. Sure it's gold. Unless they're
buried deep in the bottom, damn few things '1! last submerged in
sea water for any length of time. Pure gold is one."
He kept turning and turning it over in his hands, held just below
the water's surface. Almost unconsciously, he had turned his
body so that the mask would be between him and the boat, thus
providing the maximum degree of shelter from any prying eyes.
Of course he knew it was unlikely that anyone was really watching
him with a telescope. But still.
Tom said, "There'll be a couple of pounds of gold in this. A few
thousand bucks just for the metal. But the thing itself… it'll be
worth a fortune."
"What're you going to do with it?" Sal's voice was quieter than
before.
"Right now, put it away." He moved against the boat, snatched
up a towel lying inside, wrapped the mask quickly, and shoved it
under a thwart. Again he looked around, unable to shake the
feeling that the state tax agents—or somebody—were already
cruising toward him to take away his treasure. But there was no
one. No vehicle approached.
He quickly put his snorkeling mask back on and began to swim
around the boat in an everwidening search pattern, scanning the
bottom as he had never scanned before. Nothing. Back at the
very spot where he had found the mask, he tore into the sand with
hands and feet. Nothing.
At last he gave up and clung to the side of the boat. He said,
"You look as if we just lost a fortune overboard instead of bringing
one up."
"Tom. If it's real, wouldn't there be a…a chest, or something?
The wreckage of a ship?"
"No. No, not likely." He levered himself up into the boat, felt
once of the hardness wrapped in the towel below the thwart, and
then started to take off his fins. ' "That's got to be from some
Spanish treasure ship. And it was four hundred years ago when
they came up this way from Mexico and Peru. By now, any wood
is gone, completely rotted away."
"Peru's on the Pacific."
He got the impression that she wanted his find to be unreal.
"Sure it is. But they brought the stuff in ships up to the isthmus of
Panama and lugged it across, then put it in different ships on the
Atlantic side. Then up this way, hugging the coast all around the
Gulf. That was the easiest route men. But what with war and
pirates and storms, a good pan of their loot never made it back to
Spain." Black-haired, black-bearded, "his chest hair a dark mat
slow-drying even in the sun, he worked with practiced hands at
getting the boat ready to head home.
Meanwhile the girl sat there holding her bathing cap and looking
under the thwart.
He paused. "Look, Sal, I'm gonna split this right down the
middle with you. And it can be worth a fortune. For your pan, what
you've got to do is keep this absolutely quiet. I know how these
things work. If we're good little citizens and tell everybody what
we've found, the state government steps in, and they'll rip us off
for more than half. And it might be years before we get what little
we're allowed to keep."
Sal had nothing to say, and she maintained her silence until the
boat was moving and the Keys were noticeably closer. Then she
suddenly said: "I don't know if I want half."
Tom looked at her. "Sure you do. Later you will, if not right now.
Look, I'm going to handle all the business. All you have to do is
keep quiet. If anyone should ever ask you, all we did today was
swim and snorkel and mess around. The subject of treasure
never came up."
He swept his eyes hurriedly once more round the horizon, then
bent and with one hand unrolled the towel and lifted out his find.
His fingers held it. Incredible. Wanting to get Sal more involved in
this thing, he asked, "You want to try it on?"
She had pulled her sunburned feet back as if to keep them
away from the towel when it was being opened. She didn't
answer. But her body was tilting forward slightly, as if being drawn;
her eyes were fascinated.
Before handing it over, he raised it to his own face once again,
seeing the watery light-ripples float in through its eyes. Seeing—
He jerked the mask down from his face and sat there blinking at
it in his lap. He rubbed his eyes.
"What's wrong, Tom?"
"Nothing." He gave the yellow weight to her. "It was like I
thought I could see through the eyes. And there was…"
"What?"
"Like a couple of men." He cut short his answer abruptly. When
he looked up again from tending the boat, Sal was sitting there
holding the thing in both hands, her eyes wide and face solemn, a
little pale around the lips. He wasn't sure whether she had tried it
on or not.
"Tom."
"What?"
"You're gonna want to kill me, but I wish you'd throw it
overboard again."
"What?"
"All right, all right. But at least don't wear it anymore. I don't like
the way it looks. And I don't care if I get any money or not."
He reached for the thing, smiling with one side of his mouth and
repeated. "You will, later on." He wrapped the golden weight and
tucked it far back under the thwart; a casual glance would not even
notice the towel.
Now some detail could be seen in the rim of vegetation ahead
on the horizon. A couple of other islands in the staggering chain
were visible, along with the white tracery of the connecting
highway bridges. On an island to the south he could see a
high-rise going up, looking as out of place as it would have at the
North Pole.
He had to say something about it, thought he really didn't want
to: "I thought I saw my brother Mike, as if he was sitting right there
beside you…" He let his voice trail off. It had been too crazy. A
white-haired man's figure near Mike, and somewhere in the air
behind them a huge golden sun-disc, and stylized red daggers or
lightning bolts in a circular pattern.
Sal took his revelation with surprising—no, disturbing— calm.
She said, "I saw—myself, throwing the thing overboard." She
wasn't joking in the least, or even smiling. "Maybe that's just what I
should have done. You could have found it again if you'd tried
hard enough. And that way you'd have believed me—that I don't
want the money. And you'd have kept me out of all of it from here
on."
Tom shook his head. He had read somewhere that certain
psychic disturbances could be contagious. There had been
epidemics of people thinking themselves possessed by demons
. He said aloud, "Out of all what? There's not gonna be any
trouble, just some money. The light must come through in some
funny way, and you saw what you were thinking about anyway,
something like looking into a fire. You'll take money when the time
comes, kid. You'll be willing."
After that they were quiet for what seemed a long time, riding
the light chop between infinite sky and sea. Only when they were
actually coming into the harbor did he speak again.
"I'm going to find a good place to hide it, to begin with. And I
damn sure don't mean to give it away."
"Why don't you call your brother about it?" Sal suggested after
a moment's silence, sending prickles down his spine through the
July heat. He was certain he had said nothing to her about Mike's
holding a telephone in his vision.
"Why do you say that?" he asked. "You haven't even met him."
"Just the way you talk about him sometimes. He sounds—I
don't know. Smart. Competent." She still hadn't found the exact
word for what she meant.
Tom smiled faintly. "He's lucky, is what he is. And if you think I
have a mean streak, you should see him sometimes."
"He doesn't sound mean, the way you talk about him."
"All right, he's not mean. Basically." And with that he had to get
busy docking. As he worked, he could catch glimpses of the
masts of the treasure-hunting company's vessels, moored not far
a way. If they ever learned of his find, they would think it was
something he had located while working for them and had
somehow managed to keep for himself till now. They would be
putting in a claim. If that happened, Sally could testify…but once
the legal wrangling started, most of the money would be lost to
him, one way or another.
No, he was going to think positive. This time, for a change, he
was going to screw the world. Maybe in a secret sale he could get
fifty thousand dollars for this thing. Then, even allowing for a split
with Sal—say he gave her fifteen, twenty thousand, that would be
enough, more might scare her too much—he would have a stake
big enough to give him a fighting chance against the world. To get
somewhere and be somebody.
But maybe he could sell a thing like this for as much as a
hundred thousand. To do that would for damn sure take some
hard bargaining. Nobody gave away that kind of bread. But he
knew for a fact, from stories heard when he worked for the
treasure hunters, there were wealthy art dealers and collectors
willing to pay such sums and ask no questions beyond
authenticating whatever they bought.
In silence he and Sal left the rented boat at the dock and went
to unchain their bicycles from the uncrowded rack. One thing
about the Keys in summer—you rarely had to wait in line for
anything. And once you got through the bottleneck of the single
connecting highway, heavy traffic was six cars coming along
without a break.
Tom had stuffed the wrapped mask along with other odds and
ends into his habitual backpack. Sal still in her bikini, himself in
trunks and T-shirt—sweat-soaked the moment he put it on—they
pedaled through the humid heat, past weather-beaten houses,
oleander, cheap bars, breadfruit, old and new motels, palm trees,
uncrowded beaches, bougainvillea, tourist-trade shops, royal
poinciana, open-air laundromats. An active little city, you could
usually find what you wanted in it. The trouble was, despite all the
underground stories and rumors he heard when he was in the
diving game, he had no names of any of these wealthy and
unscrupulous collectors, nor any way of getting in contact with
them, in New York or Chicago or wherever in hell they lived.
He could start trying to make contact by talking to some shady
people he knew. He had in mind one sometime drug dealer that
he thought he could find, here on the Keys or in Miami Beach. Of
course he wouldn't trust that cat for a moment. And meanwhile,
where was he going to hide the thing?
Following Sal, Tom climbed the narrow stair to her small
apartment over a Spanish grocery store. As expected, her
roommate was out at work. Tom slipped off his backpack and
stood there swinging the promising weight of it by a strap while
she closed the door and peeled off her bra and stood luxuriating
in the cool wash from a window air conditioner that had been left
running.
Maybe two pounds of gold. He had to get it stowed away
somewhere, then do some thinking. "I'll see you later, Sal."
Today was not the day to change his routine, and Tom went as
usual to the book-and-record store, in the new shopping center,
where for a couple of months now he had been working evenings
as a clerk. He would call Mike, he thought. After work tonight…
Business was slow. The Chevrolet crowd of summer tourists
didn't buy as much as the Cadillac people who came in winter, so
he had time this evening to sit behind his counter and think. The
break was welcome. From a display table he picked up a gift
volume, Central American Art. It proved to be full of beautiful
color plates, though short on the hard information he was seeking.
He felt sure the mask was Indian—pre-Columbian— though he
wasn't an expert and couldn't begin to pin it down any closer than
that without help. He wanted to identify it before he went to
anyone. If he didn't sound stupid, they wouldn't try to cheat him so
badly. Tomorrow he would try the library.
… Jesus, it had been weird. In the background, red daggers
and a great golden disc. Up front, apparently right in the boat,
Mike, holding a phone, plain as day. Certainly Mike, though near
as Tom could remember, the face had looked sort of like a
drawing rather than an image from memory. Some psychologist
could explain it, sure. But meanwhile he wasn't going to put that
thing on again—
The shop's door chime signaled a customer. Tom looked up at
the approaching white-haired man, whose face might be taken for
young or old—a strange face that would be hard to forget.
Tom had never met the man before. But he had seen him. Just
today.
Chapter 2. The First Giving
« ^ »
Lake Texcoco, Mexico, 1325
Amid tall shoreline reeds, under a blaze of stars that spanned a
moonless midnight sky, Cimatl waited, standing almost
motionless on a small flat rock at the lake's very edge. He
shivered slightly and continuously in the chill that had come with
night in this tropical high valley. To his ears that listened
persistently for the strange sounds of certain gods, there came
now only the cries of nightbirds, croaking of amphibians, an
occasional splash of a jumping fish. But Cimatl did not falter on
this third night of his vigil. Last night at midnight, when the Sun's
great jealous eye was farthest from the world, he had been briefly,
tantalizingly rewarded by the rush of great wings overhead, and
for one moment he had seen a shape far larger than any bird
pass swift against the stars.
This vigil by night was necessary because their age-long and
faithful worship of the Sun had not saved Cimatl's people from the
terrible dangers that now seemed certain to overwhelm them.
Two generations past, their long flight from the north had ended in
this land—ended in sheer exhaustion, not success. Except for
this stretch of swampy lakeshore, disdained by other nearby
tribes, they were still landless. New persecutions threatened, as
terrible as those that had driven their grandfathers from the north,
and there seemed no place left to flee. The Tenocha had been
unable even to attach themselves as vassals to a stronger tribe,
and thus gain some measure of protection.
By day, Cimatl and the other priests of the Tenocha continued
to beseech the Sun for help; but by night Cimatl, fasting and
desperate, had as a last resort begun this other, secret worship.
Here amid tall reeds, the darkness of midnight seemed the
deepest. And now, as on the two previous nights, Cimatl began to
chant a litany to the gods of darkness whose names were terrible
to speak. As his voice rose up, he heard, as on the preceding
midnight, wings that could not be those of any ordinary bird,
beating at some great distance—beating so fast they made a
steady roaring, like the wind in great tree branches.
摘要：

ScannedbyGarth-Aut.ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyEBookDesignGroupstylesheet.validXHTML1.0StrictTheMaskoftheSunbyFredSaberhagenContents|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|Chapter1.TheRaising^»KeyWest,1975Itdidn'tpaytoreachtoofastforgold.Bettertosavorthestill-possibledreamforafewmomentslon...

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