Find the Feathered Serpent полностью

They sat at a low table in front of one of the temples, the table having been set up in the court for Neil and his guides. Rixal rose and tugged at Neil’s hand, leading him to a patch of dry earth beyond the court. He knelt then, and held up one finger.

Neil nodded.

With the end of a stick, Rixal poked into the sand, making a large dot. He pointed to the symbol, •, and held up one finger again. Neil smiled and nodded.

Rixal then held up two fingers and poked into the dried earth again, twice this time. ••.

Neil nodded in understanding again. Rixal repeated the process until he was holding up four fingers, with four dots in the sand.

Then he held up five fingers. He moved the stick across the sand in a long  symbol.

Neil understood that the bar was five. Rixal dropped the stick near his knees, held up five fingers of one hand and one of the other, and made the symbol  in the earth. This was six. It continued:  was eight: was ten: was nineteen.

Neil understood now and drew some symbols in the sand to show that he knew what they meant. Rixal was delighted, and he chattered in rapid Maya to Tela, who was no longer shy in Neil’s presence.

Then Rixal dragged Neil to one of the huge pillars embedded in the earth at various spots around the city. He pointed to the faces carved on the stone, and began holding up fingers again. Neil realized that there was probably a face symbol for each number, too, but he had had enough teaching for one day.

He held up his hands in protest, and Rixal and Tela laughed uproariously. They went back to their fruit, and Neil made a mental note to look into the Maya face symbols at a later date. It was while they were eating that he used his new-found knowledge to scrawl his age on the table top with a charred stick, using the bars and dots system that Rixal had taught him.

The weeks seemed to float by lazily. Neil was so busy with his sight-seeing and his absorption of the language that he’d almost forgotten about Dave, Erik, and the time machine. One day, he went down to the beach alone, walking through the forest, and making sure he marked a trail this time.

The machine stood on the white sand, its rotors still badly twisted, the surf whipping whitely onto the beach behind it. The ocean was a clear green, stretching as far as the eye could see. Neil stood on the edge of the forest, looking at the machine and the ocean, his heart suddenly filling with a terrible loneliness for home. He walked to the machine and opened the hatchway.

“Dave,” he called.

“Yeah?” came the shouted answer.

“It’s Neil.”

“Hiya, stranger. Just a second, I’ll be right down.”

Neil waited while Dave climbed down the aluminum ladder. When Dave stepped out into the sunlight, he grinned in near-embarrassment and extended a grimy hand toward Neil.

Realizing that the hand was covered with grease, he withdrew it hastily and wiped it on the back of his dungarees.

He held it out again and Neil gripped it tightly.

“Long time no see,” Dave said.

“They’ve been showing me around the city,” Neil explained, feeling a little awkward. He was usually asleep by the time Dave returned at night, and Dave was up and gone long before Neil awoke. “I’ve been learning a lot.”

“Good,” Dave answered in earnest honesty. “You’ll have a lot to tell your father when you get back.” His face clouded. “If we get back,” he added.

“Is it that bad?” Neil asked, looking at the rotors at the top of the machine.

Dave’s eyes followed Neil’s to the twisted rotors. “Oh, I can fix that, all right. I think. It’ll just take a lot of heat and some steady pounding. I’m worried about the time mechanism.”

“Has something happened to the crystal?” Neil asked, a faint touch of panic in his voice.

“That’s just it,” Dave replied. “I don’t know. I’ve been over every inch of the panel and I can’t find the trouble. She’s as dead as yesterday, though; that’s for sure.”

Neil hesitated. “Think you can fix her?”

“I don’t know,” Dave replied slowly. He grinned. “How’d you like to spend the rest of your life in Chichen-Itza?”

Neil gulped hard. “I… I… is there a possibility we might have to?”

“A strong possibility,” Dave said, suddenly sobering.

“Well… I suppose if we have to…”

Dave clapped Neil on the shoulder. “Say,” he said, changing the subject, “I am glad you came down to the beach. I’ve been dying for a cigarette all morning, and you have my lighter.” He held out his hand.

Neil dug into his back pocket and fished out Dave’s lighter. Dave took a cigarette from a crumpled package and put it between his lips. He clicked the lighter and the top snapped up, but no flame appeared.

“Darn,” he said.

He pressed down again, the top rising to expose the wick, a faint spark snapping momentarily into life.

“I really should throw this away,” Dave said, “but I’ve had it since the Army.”

“Sentimentalist,” Neil joked.