God had brought him to the Portuguese shore, and the Portuguese were the great sailors, the daring explorers of the world. Would he not be the viceroy of kings? He would find a way to win the sponsorship of the King of Portugal. And if not him, then another king, or some other man and not a king at all. He would succeed, for God was with him.
Diko stopped the playback. "Do you want to see it again?" she asked.
"That was not God," said Kemal.
"Show this anywhere in the Muslim world," said Kemal, "and the rioting would not stop until every Pastwatch installation within their reach was destroyed."
"One of us? That message was sent by Pastwatch?" asked Kemal, already angry at the thought of one of them meddling with history.
"If not one of us, then who did this?" asked Hassan.
"Are you saying we created this as a hoax?" said Tagiri.
The others looked at him, unable to think of anything to say.
Hassan took a step toward Kemal, but Tagiri interposed herself between them. "Perhaps you're right, Kemal," she said. "But perhaps not. For one thing, I don't think their purpose was just to turn Columbus away from his crusade. For that, all they would have needed to do was command him to abandon the idea. And they said that if he failed, the consequences would be terrible for Christianity. A far cry from trying to undo the Christian conquest of the Muslim world."
"Perhaps," said Tagiri. "But I think they were doing something else. There was something else that would have happened if Columbus had not received this vision. And we must find out what it was."
Tagiri smiled nastily at Kemal. "I know one man of unflagging persistence and great wisdom and quick judgment. He is just the man to undertake the project of determining what it was that this vision was meant to avoid, or what it was meant to accomplish. For some reason the people of that other future determined to send Columbus west. Someone must head the project of finding out why. And you, Kemal, you're doing nothing productive at all, are you? Your great days are behind you, and now you're reduced to going about telling other people that their dreams are not worth accomplishing."
"Is he right, Mother?" asked Diko.
"I think he'll head the project of finding out what would have happened," said Tagiri. "I think the problem will take hold of him and won't let go and he'll end up working with us."
"Kemal as an enemy is formidable, but Kemal as a friend is irreplaceable," said Tagiri. "He found Atlantis, didn't he, when no one believed it even needed to be discovered? He found the great flood. He found Yewesweder. And if anyone can, he'll find what history would have been, or at least a plausible scenario. And we'll be glad to be working with him." She grinned. "We mad people, we're stubborn and unreasonable and impossible to deal with, but there is a certain breed of willing victim that chooses to work with us anyway."
"And I think we've all missed one of the biggest points of all in Diko's great discovery. Yes, Diko, great." Tagiri looked around at them. "Can't you see what it is?"
"And maybe," said Tagiri, "maybe we can do better."
Chapter 6 -- Evidence
Then a young virgin named Blood Woman came to the ball court of sacrifice to see the tree, and there she spoke to the head of One Hunahpu, and the head of One Hunahpu spoke to her. When she touched the bone of his head, his spittle came out onto her hand, and soon she conceived a child. Seven Hunahpu consented to this, and so he was also the father of what filled her belly.
Blood Woman went to the house of One Hunahpu's widow, Xbaquiyalo, to bear her child. When the child was born, it was two children, two sons, whom she named Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Xbaquiyalo didn't like the noise the babies made, and she had them thrown out of the house. Her sons, One Monkey and One Artisan, had no wish for new brothers, so they put them out on an anthill. When the babies didn't die there, the older brothers put them in brambles, but still they thrived. The hatred between the older brothers and the younger brothers continued through all the years as the babies grew to be men.
At the end of the game, Xbalanque was forced to sacrifice his brother Hunahpu. He wrapped his brother's heart in a leaf, and then he danced alone in the ball court until he cried out his brother's name and Hunahpu rose up from the dead and took his place beside him. Seeing this, their two opponents in the game, the great lords One and Seven Death, demanded that they, too, be sacrificed. So Hunahpu and Xbalanque took the heart from One Death; but he didn't rise from the dead. Seeing this, Seven Death was terrified and begged to be released from his sacrifice. Thus, in shame, his heart was taken without courage and without consent. And this was how Hunahpu and Xbalanque avenged their fathers, One and Seven Hunahpu, and broke the great power of the lords of Xibalba.
When a third son was born to Dolores de Cristo Matamoro, she remembered her studies in Mayan culture when she was growing up back in Tekax in the Yucatan, and since she was unsure who the father of this child was, she named him for Hunahpu. If she had had yet another son, no doubt she would have named him Xbalanque, but instead when Hunahpu was still a toddler she was jostled off a platform in the station at San Andres Tuxtla and the train mangled her.
This was his project from the beginning: to find out what would have happened in Mesoamerica if the Spanish had not come. Unlike Tagiri, whose file had a silver tag that meant her oddities were to be indulged, Hunahpu met resistance every step of the way. "Pastwatch watches the past," he was told again and again. "We don't speculate on what might have been if the past had not happened the way it happened. There's no way to test it, and it would have no value even if you got it right."
Then came the news of the discovery of the Intervention. A Pastwatch from another future had sent a vision to Columbus, which turned him away from his dream of leading a crusade to liberate Constantinople and brought him, eventually, to America. It was astonishing; to an Indie like Hunahpu it was also appalling. How dared they! For he knew at once what it was that the Interveners had been trying to avoid, and it wasn't the Christian conquest of Islam.
Hunahpu waited for Kemal to write to him, or for one of the Pastwatch supervisors to recommend that Kemal look into Hunahpu's research, or even -- as must inevitably happen -- for Hunahpu's reassignment to Kemal's project. But the reassignment didn't come, the letter didn't come, and Hunahpu's superiors seemed not to realize that Kemal's most valuable assistant would be this sluggish young Maya who had worked dispiritedly on their tedious data gathering project.
But it was not in Hunahpu's nature to despair. Instead he grimly redoubled his efforts, knowing that the only way to surmount the barrier of contempt was to produce a body of evidence so compelling that Kemal would be forced to respect it. And if he had to, Hunahpu would carry that evidence to Kemal directly, bypassing all the regular channels, the way that Kemal had come to Tagiri in that already-legendary meeting. Of course, there was a difference. Kemal had come as a famous man, with known achievements, so that he was courteously received even when his message was unwelcome. Hunahpu had no achievements whatsoever, or none that were recognized by anybody, and so it was unlikely that Kemal would ever agree to see him or look at his work. Yet this did not stop him. Hunahpu continued, patiently assembling evidence and writing careful analyses of what he had found and loathing every moment he had to spend recording the details of the building of seagoing ships among the coastal Zapotecs during the years from 1510 to 1524.
"I'm working," said Hunahpu.
"You asked my supervisor about me?" asked Hunahpu. He wasn't sure whether to be annoyed at the intrusion or pleased that his brothers had cared enough to check up on him.
Hunahpu looked at them sadly. "I can't," he said.
"Don't think either of us has any money to help you," said the policeman. "Or even to feed you more than a few meals a week, though you're welcome to that much, for our mother's sake."
They got up to leave. The policeman, who was older and hadn't beaten him up as a child half so often as the priest, stopped in the doorway. His face was tinged with regret. "You aren't going to change a thing, are you?" he said.
The policeman shook his head. "Why do you have to be so ... Indie?"
"So are we, Hunahpu."
"So our names are Spanish."
"Thinned?" asked the policeman. "Our veins are--"
The policeman's face darkened. "I see that you wish not to be my brother."
The priest reappeared in the doorway behind the policeman. "They would have been bloody-handed human sacrificers, torturers, and self-mutilators who never heard the name of Christ."
"Come to my house for dinner," said the policeman.
His brothers left, and Hunahpu turned to his computer and addressed a message to Kemal. There was no chance that Kemal would read it -- there were too many thousands of people on the Pastwatch net for a man like Kemal to pay attention to what would end up as a third-tier message from an obscure data-collector on the Zapotec project. Yet he had to get through, somehow, or his work would come to nothing. So he wrote the most provocative message he could think of, and then sent it to everybody involved in the whole Columbus project, hoping that one of them would glance at third-tier e-mail and be intrigued enough to bring his words to the attention of Kemal.
Kemal: Columbus was chosen because he was the greatest man of his age, the one who broke the back of Islam. He was sent westward in order to prevent the worst calamity in all of human history: The Tlaxcalan conquest of Europe. I can prove it. My public papers have been posted and ignored, as surely as yours would have been if you had not found evidence of Atlantis in the old TruSite I weather recordings. There are no recordings of the Tlaxcalan conquest of Europe, but the proof is still there. Talk to me and save yourself years of work. Ignore me and I will go away.
***
Somehow he had to put together an expedition to explore the ocean to the west. Several of his trading voyages took him to the Azores and Madeira -- the Portuguese would never let a foreigner go beyond that point, into African waters, but they were welcome to come to Madeira to buy African gold and ivory, or to the Azores to take on supplies at highly inflated prices. Columbus knew from his contacts in those places that great expeditions passed through Madeira every few months, bound for Africa. Columbus knew that Africa led nowhere useful -- but he coveted the fleets. Somehow he had to win command of one of them, bound westward instead of southward. And yet what hope did he have of ever achieving this?
Since he had been born with no family connections in Portugal, there was only one way to acquire them. And marriage into a well-connected family, when he had neither fortune nor prospects, was a difficult project indeed. He needed a family on the fringes of nobility, and one that was not on the way up. A rising family would be looking to improve its station by marrying above themselves; a sinking family, especially a junior branch with unlikely daughters and little fortune, might look upon such a foreign adventurer as Columbus with -- well, not favor, exactly, but at least tolerance. Or perhaps resignation.
It was there that he saw Felipa, or rather made sure that she saw him. He had made discreet inquiries about several young ladies, and learned much that was promising about her. Her father, Governor Perestrello, had been a man of some distinction and influence, with a tenuous claim on nobility that no one contested during his lifetime because he had been one of the young seafarers trained by Prince Henry the Navigator and had taken part with distinction in the conquest of Madeira. As a reward, he had been made governor of the small island of Porto Santo, a nearly waterless place of little value except for the prestige it gave him back in Lisbon. Now he was dead, but he was not forgotten, and the man who married his daughter would be able to meet seafarers and make contacts in court that could eventually bring him before the king.
It worked well enough. Felipa had heard of him, and in church he caught her looking at him and bowed. She blushed and turned away. A rather homely girl. Her father was a warrior and her mother was built like a fortress -- the daughter had her father's fierceness and her mother's formidable thickness. Yet there was a glint of grace and humor in her smile when she glanced back at him, once the obligatory blush had passed. She knew it was a game they were playing, and she didn't mind. After all, she was not a prime prospect, and if the man who wooed her was an ambitious Genovese who wanted to use her family connections, how was that different from the daughters of more fortunate families who were wooed by ambitious lords who wanted to use their families' wealth? A woman of rank could hardly expect to be married for her own virtues -- those had only a minor effect on the asking price, as long as she was a virgin, and that family asset, at least, had been well protected.
At last Columbus met Felipa, and not long afterward they were married. Dona Moniz knew perfectly well what this Genovese adventurer was after, or thought she did, and she was quite certain that no sooner would he have gained entree into courtly society than he would immediately begin to establish liaisons with prettier -- and richer -- mistresses, angling for ever more advantageous connections in court. She had seen his type a thousand times before, and she saw through him. So, just before the wedding, she surprised everyone by announcing that her son, the governor of Porto Santo, had invited Felipa and her new husband to come live with him on the island. And Dona Moniz herself would of course come with them, since there was no reason for her to stay in Lisbon when her dear daughter Felipa and her precious son the governor -- her whole family, and never mind the other married daughters -- were hundreds of miles away out in the Atlantic Ocean. Besides, the Madeira Islands had a warmer and more healthful climate.
The voyage was brutal for Felipa. She had never been seasick before, and by the time they arrived at Porto Santo, Dona Moniz was sure that she and Columbus had already conceived a child. Sure enough, nine months later Diego was born. Felipa took a long time recovering from the pregnancy and birth, but as soon as she was strong enough she devoted herself to the child. Her mother viewed this with some distaste, since there were nurses for that kind of thing, but she could hardly complain, for it soon became obvious that Diego was all that Felipa had; her husband did not seem hungry for her company. Indeed, he seemed eager to get off the island at every opportunity -- but not for the sake of getting to court. Instead, he kept begging for chances to get onto a ship sailing along the African coast.
With her husband so frustrated, Felipa began to pressure her mother to do something for her Cristovao. He loves the sea, Felipa said. He dreams of great voyages. Can't you do something for him?
Columbus began to spend almost every waking moment poring over the books and charts. Of course there were no charts for the western ocean, for no one who had sailed beyond the Azores or the Canaries or the Cape Verde Islands ever returned. Columbus learned, though, that the Portuguese voyagers had disdained to hug the coast of Africa. Instead, they sailed far out to sea, using better winds and deeper waters until their instruments told them that they had sailed as far south as the last voyage had reached. Then they would sail landward, eastward, hoping that this time they were farther south than the southernmost tip of Africa, that they would find a route leading eastward to India. It was that deep-sea sailing that had first brought Portuguese sailors to Madeira and then to the Cape Verde Islands. Some adventurers of the time had imagined that there might be chains of islands stretching farther to the west, and had sailed to see, but such voyages always ended in either disappointment or tragedy, and no one believed anymore that there were more islands to the west or south.
Even if they were, however, they would be unconvincing to those who would decide whether to fund a westward expedition. To persuade the king would mean ftrst persuading the learned men of his court, and that would require serious evidence, not sailors' lore. For that purpose the real treasure of Porto Santo were the books, for Perestrello had loved the study of geography, and he had Latin translations of Ptolemy.
Yet God had told him that he could reach the Orient by sailing west. Therefore Ptolemy must be wrong, and not just slightly wrong, either. He must be drastically, hopelessly wrong. And Columbus had to find a way to prove it, so that a king would allow him to lead ships to the west to fulfill the will of God.
But God didn't answer him, and so Columbus continued to think and study and try to figure out how to prove what he knew must be true and yet no one had ever guessed -- that the world was much, much smaller, the west and east much closer together than any of the ancients had ever believed. And since the only authorities that the scholars would accept were the books written by the ancients, Columbus would have to ftnd, somewhere, ancient writers who had discovered what Columbus knew had to be the truth about the world's size. He found some useful ideas in Cardinal d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, a compendium of the works of ancient writers, where he learned that Marinus of Tyre had estimated that the great landmass of the world was not 180 degrees, but 225, leaving the ocean to take up only 135 degrees. That was still much too far, but it was promising. Never mind that Ptolemy lived and wrote after Marinus of Tyre, that he had examined Marinus's figures and refuted them. Marinus offered a picture of the world that helped build Columbus's case for sailing west, and so Marinus was the better authority. There were also helpful references from Aristotle, Seneca, and Pliny.
It was still too far. But surely there were errors in Marco Polo's account, in the calculations of the ancients. Take off another 8 degrees, round it down to a mere 60! Yet it was still impossibly far. One-sixth of the Earth's circumference between the Canaries and Cipangu, and yet that still meant a voyage of more than 3,000 miles without a port of call. Bend or twist them as he might, Columbus couldn't make the writings of the ancients support what he knew to be true: that it was a matter of days or at most weeks to sail from Europe to the great kingdoms of the east. There had to be more information. Another writer, perhaps. Or some fact that he had overlooked. Something that would persuade the scholars of Lisbon to respect his request and recommend to King Jodo that he give Columbus command of an expedition.
Felipa had been warned countless times that men were demanding and unfaithful, and she was prepared for that. But what was wrong with her husband? She was the only lady available to him, and Diego should have a brother or sister, but Columbus hardly seemed to want her. "He cares for nothing but charts and maps and old books," she complained to her mother. "That and meeting pilots and navigators and men who have ever had or might someday have the ear of the king."
Instead he turned even more devotedly to the sea, until he became one of the best-known men in the port of Funchal. No ship came into port without Columbus soon finding his way aboard, befriending captains and navigators, noticing the amounts of supplies taken aboard and how long they were expected to last, noticing, in fact, everything.
"But he wasn't, and so he can't," said Dona Moniz. "Why can't he be content? He has a good life with my daughter, or he would have, if he simply paid attention to her."
"I see that you actually like this white-haired man who makes my daughter feel like a widow. "
"But he gave up the sea and stayed home."
So it was that two years after coming to the Madeira Islands, Dona Moniz at last suggested that it was time for them to return to Lisbon. Columbus packed up his father-in-law's books and charts and eagerly prepared for the voyage. Yet he knew even as he did so that for Felipa there was far less hope. The voyage to Porto Santo had been a dreadful one for her, even filled with hope in her new marriage as she was at the time. Now she would not be pregnant -- but she had also despaired of finding happiness with Columbus. What made it all the more unbearable was that the more aloof he became, the more hopelessly she loved him. She could hear him speaking to other men and his voice, his passion, his manner were captivating; she watched him poring over books that she could barely understand and she marveled at the brilliance of his mind. He wrote in the margins of the books -- he dared to add his words to the words of the ancients! He dwelt in a world that she could never enter, and yet she longed to. Take me with you into these strange places, she said to him silently. But the silence with which he answered her was not filled with longing, or if it was, his longings did not include her or little Diego. So she knew that the voyage back to Lisbon would not bring her closer to her husband, or farther. She would never touch him, not really. She had his child, but the more she hungered for the man himself, the more she reached out to him, the more he would push her away; and yet if she did not reach out, he would ignore her completely; there was no path she could see that would lead her to happiness.
During the voyage back to Portugal, Felipa was not so terribly seasick, but she nevertheless stayed in her bed, bleakly staring at the walls of her tiny cabin. And from this sickness of heart she would never recover. Even in Lisbon, where Dona Moniz hoped that her old friends would cheer her up, Felipa only rarely consented to go out. Instead she devoted herself to little Diego and spent the rest of her time haunting her own house. When Columbus was away on a voyage or on business in the city, she wandered about as if searching for him; when he was there, she would spend days working up the courage to try to engage him in conversation. Whether he politely listened or curtly asked her to let him alone so he could concentrate on his work, the end was the same. She went to her bed and wept, for she was not part of his life at all, and she knew no way to enter it, and so she loved him all the more desperately, and knew all the more surely that it was some failing in her that made her unlovable to her husband.
The answer was, of course, that none of their husbands was Cristovao. None of them burned with his inner fire. None of them had such a deep gravity of passion in his heart, drawing a woman ever closer, even though that deep well in him would drown her and never yield anything, never give off anything that might nourish her or slake her thirst for his love.
Almost as soon as Columbus returned to Lisbon, he found the book that he was looking for. The geographic work of an Arab named Alfragano had been translated into Latin, and Columbus found in it the perfect tool to shrink those last 60 degrees to a reasonable voyaging distance. If Alfragano's calculations were assumed to be in Roman miles, then the 60 degrees of distance between the Canaries and Cipangu would amount to as little as 2,000 nautical miles at the latitudes he would be sailing. With reasonably favorable winds, which God would surely provide for him, the voyage could be made in as few as eight days; two weeks at the most.
At last his marriage to Felipa paid off. He used every contact he had made, and won the chance to present his ideas at court. He stood boldly before King Joao, knowing that God would touch his heart and make him understand that it was God's will that he mount this expedition with Columbus at its head. He laid out his maps, with all his calculations, showing Cipangu within easy reach, and Cathay but a short voyage beyond that. The scholars listened; the King listened. They asked questions. They mentioned the ancient authorities that contradicted Columbus's view of the size of the earth and the ratio of land to water, and Columbus answered them patiently and with confidence. This is the truth, he said. Until one of them said, "How do you know that Marinus is right and Ptolemy is wrong?"
Even as he said it, he knew that it was not an answer that would persuade them. He knew, seeing their polite nods, their not-so-covert glances at the King, that their recommendation would be squarely against him. Well, he thought, I have done all I could. Now it is up to God. He thanked the King for his kindness, reaffirmed his certainty that this expedition would cover Portugal in glory and make it the greatest kingdom of Europe and bring Christianity to countless souls, and took his leave.
Upon his return he eagerly awaited the King's answer, expecting to be told any day that he would be given the ships, the crew, the supplies that he needed.
Columbus was devastated. For days he hardly ate or slept. He did not know what to think. Wasn't this God's plan? Didn't God tell kings and princes what to do? How, then, could King Joao have refused him?
Felipa saw her husband suffering and she knew that in the one thing that she had ever provided him that he desired, she had failed. He had needed a connection at court, and the influence of her family name was not enough. Why, then, was he married to her? She was now an intolerable burden to him. She had nothing that he could possibly desire or need or love. When she brought five-year-old Diego to him, to try to cheer him up, he sent the boy away so gruffly that the child cried for an hour and refused to go to his father again. It was the last straw. Felipa knew that Columbus hated her now, and that she deserved his hatred, having given him nothing that he wanted.
In her last days, Columbus became as solicitous of her as she had ever desired. But she knew in her heart that this did not mean that he loved her. Rather he was doing his duty, and when he talked to her of how sorry he was for his long neglect, she knew that this was said not because he wished her to live so he could do better in the future, but rather because he wanted her forgiveness so that his conscience could be free when at last her death freed him in every other way.
"And you'll be there beside me to see it, my Felipa," he said.
"Everything," said Columbus.
"I promise," he said.
Diego heard this and remembered it. His father loved him after all. And his father had loved his mother, too. And someday, if his father became great, Diego would be great after him. He wondered if that meant that someday he would own an island, the way Grandmother did. He wondered if it meant that someday he would sail a ship. He wondered if it meant that someday he would stand before kings. He wondered if it meant that his father would leave him now and he would never see him again.
Columbus left him there, but he visited from time to time, and in his letters to the prior, Father Juan Perez, he never failed to mention Diego and ask after him. Many sons had less of their fathers than that, Diego knew. And a small part of his dear father was far greater than all the love and attention of many lesser men. Or so he told himself to stave off the humiliation of tears during the loneliness of those first months.
He would not fail, he was sure of it. Because even though he had no proof, he knew that he was right.
"I have no proof," said Hunahpu, "but I know that I'm right."
"How do you know you're right without evidence?" she asked mildly.
"Fair enough," she answered.
"I can't guarantee you that," she said. "But you can come to Juba and present your evidence to me."
"Of course we'll pay for your travel," she said, "and you can stay here as our guest."
"Diko," she said.
"Yes," she said.
"And which no one has paid the slightest attention to? Yes."
"I have questions for you," she said.
"Then I'll be very surprised," she said. "Everyone knows that the Aztec Empire was on the verge of collapse when Cortes arrived in the 1520s. Everyone also knows that there was no possibility of Mesoamerican technology rivaling European technology in any way. Your speculations about a Mesoamerican conquest of Europe are irresponsible and absurd."
"I believe in leaving no stone unturned. You're a stone that nobody's turned yet, and so ..."
"Will you come?"
"Send copies of all pertinent files beforehand, so I can look them over on my own computer."
"Then send me your bibliography. When can you come? I need to request a leave of absence on your behalf so you can consult with us."
"I can request it," she said.
"I can't read everything by tomorrow. Next week. Tuesday. But send me all the files and lists I need immediately."
"No, I'll request it in the next fifteen minutes. Nice talking to you. I hope you aren't a crackpot."
She broke the connection.
"What I've always been doing," he answered.
"It would be cheaper for you to fire me, " he said, "but it'll be harder for me to help them in Juba if I lose my access to the Pastwatch computer system."
"No guarantees," he said. "That may end up being the list that everybody agrees to."
"I hope it turns out to be worth the cost," he said.
"I haven't," said Hanahpu. "I want to change the vision."
"Don't worry," he said, smiling. "I'll never forget that."
Chapter 7 -- What Would Have Been
She went to him. He looked at her, his face betraying not even a flicker of expectation or relief, though he must have recognized her, must have looked up her picture in the Pastwatch roster before he came.
"I'm Hunahpu," he said. "It was kind of you to greet me."
He didn't smile. A cold fish, she thought. "Have you any bags?" she asked.
The ride to the hotel was wordless. He offered no comment on the accommodation. "Well," she said, "I assume you'll want to rest in order to overcome jet lag. The best advice is to sleep for three hours or so, and then get up and eat immediately."
He slept? On the way to the most important interview of his life?
"I ate on the train," he said.
"I can start now," he said. He took off his shoulder bag and laid it on the bed. There was an economy of movement in the way he did it. He neither tossed it carelessly nor placed it carefully.
Diko shuddered. She couldn't think why. Then she realized that it was because of Hunahpu, the way he was standing there with nothing in his hands, nothing on his shoulder, no thing that he could hold or fiddle with or clutch to himself. He had set aside the one accessory he carried, and yet seemed as calm and relaxed as ever. It made her feel the way she felt when someone else stood too close to the edge of a precipice, a sort of empathetic horror. She could never have done that. In a strange place, alone, she would have had to cling to something familiar. A notebook. A bag. Even a bracelet or ring or watch that she could fiddle with. But this man -- he seemed perfectly at ease without anything. No doubt he could fling away his clothes and walk naked through life and never show a sign of feeling vulnerable. It was unnerving, his perfect self-possession.
"Do what?" he asked.
He thought about that for a moment. "Because I don't know what else to do."
"Yes," he said. "Me too."
He nodded. But his face seemed just as placid as before, his body just as relaxed. In fact, even as he agreed that he was terrified, his manner, his expression radiated the opposite message -- that he was at ease, perhaps a little bored, but not yet impatient. As if he were a disinterested spectator at the events that were about to take place.
Well, no matter. He was strange, that was obvious. But he had come to make a presentation, and now was as good a time as any. "What do you need?" she asked. "To make your case? A TruSite?"
"Then let's go to my station," she said.
"I was able to convince Don Enrique de Guzman," said Columbus. "Why is it that only kings are immune to my arguments?"
Columbus was shocked. "If you believe this, Father Antonio, then why do you support me? Why am I welcome here? Why did you help me persuade Don Enrique?"
At these words tears sprang into Columbus's eyes. In all the years of study, all the arguments in Portugal, and more recently in Don Enrique's house, no one had shown a sign of having been touched by God in support of his cause. He had begun to think that God had given up on him and was no longer helping him in any way. But now he heard words from Father Antonio -- who was, after all, a greatly learned man with much respect among scholars throughout Europe -- that confirmed that God was, in fact, touching the hearts of good men to make them believe in Columbus's mission.
"Enough of that," said Father Perez. "Never say that again."
"Here at La Rabida, behind closed doors, you can say such a thing, and we will understand. But from now on you must never give anyone even the slightest hint that it is possible to doubt your arguments."
"But Columbus must never give a sign that he knows it is possible to doubt them. Don't you understand? If it is God's will that this voyage occur, then you must inspire others with confidence in it. That is what will bring you victory, Columbus. Not reason, not arguments, but faith, courage, persistence, certainty. Those who are touched by the Spirit of God will believe in you no matter what. But how many of those will there be? How many of those have there been?"
"So -- you will not win your victory by the force of your arguments, because they are feeble indeed. And the Spirit of God will not overwhelm everyone in your path, because God does not work that way. What do you have in your favor, Cristobal?"
"And your utter, absolute faith," said Father Perez. "Am I right, Father Antonio?"
"So," said Father Perez. "You never show doubt. You never show even the possibility of doubt."
"And you always leave the impression that you know much more than you're telling," said Father Perez.
"This means that you never, never say to anyone, 'These are all my arguments, I've now told you everything I know.' If they ask you direct questions, you answer as if you were only letting a little bit of your knowledge escape. You act as if they should already know as much as you do, and you're disappointed that they do not. You act as if everyone should know the things you know, and you despair of teaching the uninitiated."
"It's more than arrogance," said Father Antonio, laughing. "It's scholarly arrogance. Believe me, Cristobal, that's exactly how they'll be treating you."
"And one more thing, Cristobal," said Father Perez. "You are good with women."
"I speak not of seduction, though I'm sure you could master those arts if you haven't already. I speak of the way they look at you. The way they pay attention to you. This is also a tool, for it happens that we live in a time when Castile is governed by a woman. A queen regnant, not just a queen consort. Do you think God leaves such things to chance? She will look at you as women look at men, and she will judge you as women judge men -- not on the strength of their arguments, and not on their cleverness or prowess in battle, but rather on the force of their character, the intensity of their passion, their strength of soul, their compassion, and -- ah, this above all -- their conversation."
"Not at all!" cried Father Perez, horrified. "Do you think I would suggest treason? No, you will meet with her publicly -- that is why she has sent for you. My position as the queen's confessor has allowed me to send letters telling about you, and perhaps that helped pique her interest. Don Louis wrote to her, offering to contribute 4,000 ducats to your enterprise. Don Enrique wanted to mount the whole enterprise himself. All of these together have made you an intriguing figure in her eyes."
"Yet still I tell you that you must think of it as an audience with the Queen alone," said Father Perez, "and you must speak to her as a woman, after the way of women, and not after the way of men. It will be tempting for you to do as most courtiers and ambassadors do, and address yourself to the King. She hates that, Cristobal. I betray no confidence of the confessional when I tell you that. They treat her as if she weren't there, and yet her kingdom is more than twice as large as the King's. Furthermore it is her kingdom that is a seafaring nation, looking westward into the Atlantic. So when you speak, you address them both, of course, for you dare not offend the King. But in all you say, you look first to the Queen. You speak to her. You explain to her. You persuade her. Remember that the amount you are asking for is not large. A few ships? This will not break the treasury. It is within her power to give you those ships even if her husband disdains you. And because she is a woman, it is within her power to believe in you and trust you and grant you your prayer even though all the wise men of Spain are arrayed against you. Do you understand me?"
"All you have to do with the scholars is outlast them. All you have to do is never, never say to them, 'This is all I have, this is all my evidence.' If you ever admit that, they will rip those arguments to shreds and even Queen Isabella cannot stand against their certainty. But if you never do this, their report will sound much more tentative. It will leave room for interpretation. They will be furious at you, of course, and they will try to destroy you, but these are honest men, and they will have to leave open a few tiny doors of doubt, a few nuances of phrase that admit the possibility that while they believe you are wrong, they can't be absolutely, finally certain."
"Who knows?" said Father Perez. "It may have to be."
"Persuade the Queen," said Father Perez.
"It's a good thing you're a widower," said Father Perez. "That's cruel to say, I know, but if the Queen knew you were married, it would dim her interest in you."
"I mean that when a man is married, he is no longer half so fascinating to a woman. Even a married woman. Especially a married woman, since she thinks she knows what husbands are like!"
"Then the Queen and I are bound to fascinate each other," said Columbus dryly.
"Faith for women, evidence for men," said Father Antonio. "Does that mean that Christianity is for women?"
"But without understanding," said Father Antonio, "there can be no faith, and so it remains the province of men."
Columbus left them still disputing the point and finished his preparations for the journey to Cordoba, where the King and Queen were holding court as they prosecuted their more-or-less permanent war against the Moors. All the talk of what women want and need and admire and believe was ridiculous, he knew -- what could celibate priests know of women? But then, Columbus had been married and certainly knew nothing about women all the same, and Father Perez and Father Antonio had both heard the confessions of many women. So perhaps they did know.
As it grew dark, Columbus grew lonely, and for the first time that he could remember, he missed Felipa and wanted her with him in the night. I never understood what you gave to me, he said to her, though he doubted she could hear him. But why couldn't she? If saints can hear prayers, why can't wives? And if she doesn't listen to me anymore -- why should she? -- I know she will be listening for the prayers of Diego.
Diego stirred, and Columbus whispered to him. "Go back to sleep, my son. Go back to sleep." Diego nestled tighter against him, and did not wake.
Hunahpu walked with Diko through the streets of Juba as if he thought the naked children and the grass huts were the most natural way to live; she had never had a visitor from out of town who didn't comment on it, who didn't ask questions. Some pretended to be quite blas‚, asking questions about whether the grass used to make the huts was local or imported, or other nonsense that was really a circuitous way of saying, Do you people actually live like this? But Hunahpu seemed to think nothing of it, though she could sense that his eyes took in everything.
"How much do you already know?" he asked. "I don't want to waste your time covering material you're familiar with."
"And you know why those were the limits?"
"Those were the limits in space," said Hunahpu. "What about the social and economic limits?"
"Huitzilopochtli," said Hunahpu.
"Huitzilopochtli."
"And within the Mexica culture?"
Hunahpu nodded.
"I don't disagree with it at all," he said.
"Within months, actually," said Hunahpu. " Cortes's most valuable Indie allies were the people of Tlaxcala. They were the ones who had already broken the back of the Mexica military machine. Ahuitzotl and Moctezuma threw army after army against them, and they always held on to their territory. It was a humiliation to the Mexica, because Tlaxcala was just to the east of Tenochtitlan, completely surrounded by the Mexica empire. And all the other people, both those who were still resisting the Mexica and those who were being ground to dust under their government, began to look to Tlaxcala as their hope of deliverance."
"It's like the Persian Empire after the Chaldean," said Hunahpu. "When the Mexica fell, it wouldn't have meant a collapse of the entire imperial structure. The Tlaxcalans would have moved in and taken over."
"No," said Hunahpu. "It's the only possible outcome. It was already under way."
He nodded. "Watch."
The picture quickly emerged. The Tlaxcalans were well aware of the restiveness both of the subject peoples and of the merchant and warrior classes within the Mexica homeland. The Mexica were ripe for both a coup and a revolution, and whichever one happened first would certainly trigger the other. The Tlaxcalans were meeting with leaders of every group, forging alliances, preparing. "The Tlaxcalans were ready. If Cortes had not come along and thrown a monkey wrench into their plans, they would have slipped in and taken over the entire Mexica empire, whole. They were setting it up to have every subject nation that mattered revolt all at once and throw their might behind Tlaxcala, trusting in the Tlaxcalans because of their enormous prestige. At the same time, they were going to have a coup topple Moctezuma, which would break up the triple alliance as Texcozo and Tacuba abandoned Tenochtitlan and joined in a new ruling alliance with Tlaxcala."
"And it would have worked," said Hunahpu. "So all this talk about the Aztec Empire being ready to fall is meaningless. It would have been replaced by a newer, stronger, more vigorous empire. And, I might point out, one that was just as viciously committed to wholesale human sacrifice as the Mexica. The only difference between them was the name of the god -- instead of Huitzilopochtli, the Tlaxcalans committed their butchery in the name of Camaxtli."
"The Tlaxcala were not the Mexica," said Hunahpu.
"In their desperate struggle for survival against a relentless, powerful enemy -- a struggle which the Mexica had never faced, I might add -- the Tlaxcala abandoned the fatalistic view of history that had crippled the Mexica and the Toltecs and the Mayas before them. They were looking for change, and it was there to be had."
Hunahpu began to take her through another round of brief scenes showing messengers from the king of Tlaxcala, but now they were not going to Mexica dissidents or subject nations. "It is well known that the Tarascan people to the west and north of Tenochtitlan had recently developed true bronze and were experimenting heavily with other metals and alloys," said Hunahpu. "What no one seems to have noticed is that the Mexica were completely unaware of this, but Tlaxcala was right on top of it. And they aren't just trying to buy the bronze. They're trying to co-opt it. They're negotiating for an alliance and they're trying to bring Tarascan smiths to Tlaxcala. They will certainly succeed, and that means that they'll have devastating and terrifying weapons unavailable to any other nations in the area."
"A bronze-tipped arrow is lighter and can fly farther and truer than a stone-tipped one. A bronze sword can pierce the padded armor that snagged and turned away flint points and flint blades. It makes a huge difference. And it wouldn't have stopped with bronze. The Tarascans were serious in their work with many different metals. They were starting to work with iron."
"I know what everybody says, but it's true." He brought up a scene with a Tarascan metallurgist working with more-or-less pure iron.
"Do you doubt that he'll find a way to make his fire hotter?" asked Hunahpu. "This clip is from a time when Cortes was already marching to Tenochtitlan. That's why the work with iron came to nothing. Because it hadn't succeeded by the time of the Spanish conquest it was not remembered. I found it because I'm the only one who believed that it mattered to try to look for it. But the Tarascans were on the verge of working with iron."
"There's no law that says bronze has to come before iron, or that iron has to wait centuries after the discovery of bronze," said Hunahpu.
"My point isn't that they caught up with European technology all in a few years -- I think that would be impossible. What I'm saying is that by allying themselves with the Tarascans and controlling them, the Tlaxcalans would have had weapons that would give them a devastating advantage over all the surrounding nations. They would cause so much fear that nations, once conquered, might stay conquered longer, might freely send the Tarascans tribute that the Mexica would have had to send an army to bring back. The boundaries would have increased and so would the stability of the empire."
"Probably," said Hunahpu. "And there's this, too. The Tlaxcala already dominated Huexotzingo and Cholula -- small nearby cities, but it gives us an idea of their idea of empire. And what did they do? They interfered in the internal politics of their client states to a degree that the Mexica never dreamed of. They weren't just extracting tribute and sacrificial victims, they were establishing a centralized government with rigid control over the governments of conquered nations. A true politically unified empire, rather than a loose tribute network. This is the innovation that made the Assyrians so powerful, and which was copied by every successful empire after them. The Tlaxcalans have finally made the same discovery two thousand years later. But think what it did for the Assyrians, and now imagine what it will do for Tlaxcala."
"But I'm not through," said Hunahpu.
Suddenly Hunahpu's animation and enthusiasm disappeared, and he became calm and stoic-looking again. Diko thought: This means that he's now afraid again.
He nodded. "When will we do this, then?"
"What about Kemal?"
"Because I never even got to the transportation issue."
The others were already drifting away, though some lingered, obviously hoping to speak to Hunahpu directly. Diko turned to them. "Let this man sleep," she said to them. "You'll all be invited to his presentation tomorrow, so why make him tell things tonight that he'll tell everybody tomorrow?"
"I thought when you stopped me it was because you didn't believe in me and you were being polite, with promises of meetings with Tagiri and Hassan and Kemal."
"Because I never before met someone who would do what you did. Stop a presentation that you thought was important."
"Diko," he said. "Most people want nothing more than to know something that people higher up don't know. To know things first. Here you had a chance to hear all of this first, and you stop it? You wait? And not only that, you promise others who are below you in the hierarchy that they can be there too?"
"That's the way it is in Juba," Hunahpu corrected her. "Or maybe that's the way it is in Tagiri's house. But everywhere else in the world, information is a coin, and people are greedy to acquire it and careful how and where they spend it."
"Did I surprise you?"
"To my friends," he said.
***
Ferdinand had no dreams of crusade; he worked to conquer Granada because it was Spanish soil, and his dream was of a single, united Spain. He knew it could not be achieved in a moment. He laid his plans with patience. He did not have to overwhelm Castile; it was enough to be married to Isabella, knowing that in their children the crowns would be united forever, and in the meantime he gave her great freedom of action in her kingdom as long as their military movements were under his direction alone. He showed the same patience in his war with Granada, never risking his armies in all-or-nothing pitched battles, but rather besieging, feinting, maneuvering, subverting, confusing the enemy, who knew that he meant to destroy them but could never quite find where to commit their forces to stop him. He would drive the Moors from Spain but he would do it without destroying Spain in the process.
So when this Columbus began to speak of great kingdoms and empires in the east, where the name of Christ had never been spoken aloud, but lived only as a dream in the hearts of those who hungered for righteousness, Santangel knew that these words would burn like flame in Isabella's heart even as they put Ferdinand to sleep. When Columbus began to tell that these heathen nations were the special responsibility of Spain, "for we are nearer to them than any other Christian nation except Portugal, and they have set out on the longest possible voyage instead of the shortest, around Africa instead of due west into the narrow ocean that divides us from millions of souls who will flock to the banners of Christian Spain," her gaze on him became rapt, unblinking.
Isabella was also a practical sovereign, who never let her personal wishes interfere with the needs of her kingdom or overtax its resources. Nevertheless, she saw this matter differently. She saw that these two lords had become believers in this Genovese who had already failed at the court of the King of Portugal. She had the letter from Father Juan Perez, her confessor, attesting that Columbus was an honest man who asked for nothing more than the opportunity to prove his beliefs, with his own life if necessary. So she had invited him to Cordoba, a decision that Ferdinand patiently indulged, and she listened to him now.
Now Santangel watched and listened as Columbus poured out his dreams and hopes to the Queen. What are you actually asking for? he asked silently. It wasn't until three hours into the interview that Columbus finally touched on that point. "No more than three or four ships -- they could be mere caravels, for that matter," he said. "This is not a military expedition. We go only to mark the path. When we return with the gold and jewels and spices of the east, then the priests can go in great fleets, with soldiers to protect them from the jealous infidels. They can spread forth through Cipangu and Cathay, the Spice Islands and India, where millions will hear the sweet name of Jesus Christ and beg for baptism. They will become your subjects, and will look to you forever as the one who brought them the glad news of the resurrection, who taught them of their sins so they can repent. And with the gold and silver, with the wealth of the East at your command, there'll be no more struggling to finance a small war against the Moors of Spain. You can assemble great armies and liberate Constantinople. You can make the Mediterranean a Christian sea again. You can stand in the tomb where the Savior's body lay, you can kneel and pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, you can raise the cross once more above the holy city of Jerusalem, over Bethlehem, the city of David, over Nazareth, where Jesus grew under the care of the carpenter and the Holy Virgin."
At long last the interview ended. Isabella, always careful, promised nothing, but Santangel could see how her eyes shone. "We will speak again," she said.