Labyrinth

The basic problem was biophysical. When the cells of most animals were frozen, their watery fluids turned to ice, which expanded to burst or crush vital, cellular components. Only a handful of species had cells that could withstand freezing, and those species revived on their own when warmed. The cells of these unique creatures contained a sugar called trehalose, which acted like antifreeze, lowering the crystallization temperature. Mildred had already verified that the transplant life of dissected, refrigerated rat hearts could be extended by many days when stored in a trehalose solution. Her ongoing research tested ways the sugar could be introduce into living bodies, and the effects of different concentrations during freezing.

Mildred was passionate about her work, which she believed would ultimately change the way all human disease was fought. Once the cryogenic process was perfected, dying patients could be safely stored until science found cures, however long that took.

While Mildred and the others snapped photos of the ruins, the sour-faced Hopi driver-tour guide probed his ear with a wooden matchstick. He wore a straw cowboy hat and his gray-streaked black hair was pulled back in a long ponytail. No cab separated him from his passengers; the 6x6 had a floorplan like a bus, only without a roof or side walls to obstruct the views.

When the shutter-clicking slowed, the driver tucked the grooming tool back in his hat band and spoke into a hand microphone. His slow drawl came out of a loudspeaker screwed to the truck bed’s wooden rails. “That settlement’s number eleven on your list,” he informed them. “We call it the Castle because it’s so high up, and because folks think it looks like one. It was first excavated in 1928, by archaeologists from the University of California at Berkeley. The buildings are from the Pueblo Three Period, from 1050 to 1300 A.D. Our ancient ones lived up there for more than five hundred years.”

By “our,” he meant Hopi.

From her advance reading on the subject, Mildred knew there were few hard facts about the cliff people of the canyon. They had drawn symbols on the rocks, but had left no written language to explain them. It was assumed that extended drought, which the area was prone to, had driven them away. Where they had gone and what had happened to them was anybody’s guess. The Navajo, who had lived nearby for millennia, referred to the cliff people as “our ancient enemies.” The Hopi and Navajo had been enemies for as long as anyone could remember, so the Hopi concluded they were related to the cliff people.

Mildred tuned out her guide. Aside from parroting terms and theories devised by social scientists to fill doctoral theses, he had nothing new to say about the missing residents, or their erased culture. Looking up at the abandoned site, Mildred felt a profound sense of loss, and of tragedy. Looking up at the ruins, she was certain that what had happened to the cliff people could never happen to her own, immensely more powerful civilization. Mildred believed in human progress and the perfectability of knowledge, a juggernaut of scientific truth rolling ever forward, ever faster.

She was dead wrong on all counts, of course.

Numbers alone didn’t guarantee immunity from extinction. Nor did the weight of accumulated scientific knowledge. A century would pass before she saw the awful truth with her own eyes: That a juggernaut of progress could fly apart in an instant and take everything with it.

The final site on the tour was a half mile down-canyon, on the other side of a freestanding spire almost as tall as the mesa. Shutters snapped, but feebly this time; the pile of rocks on a low slope was hardly scenic.

“Those are the ruins of an old cabin, number twelve on your list,” the guide said. “The woman who lived in it spent her whole life in this canyon. She was born here. She never married. She died in that hut at age 109 in the 1930s. People believe she was the last of a long, unbroken line of powerful witches. They say she spoke with the spirits of our ancient ones, and that while she was alive her magic spells kept the canyon’s demons sleeping. Some folks say they still do.”

Mildred perked up. There was very little in the academic literature about the spiritual beliefs, or supposed beliefs, of the canyon’s lost people.

“What demons?” she asked him.

“Man-eaters,” he said matter-of-factly. “Folks say they’ve always been here. No one’s sure whether the drought makes them, or whether they bring the drought with them when they come. The two are kind of a package deal. Legends say the demons are born hungry, out of the hot, still air. They only hunt at night. They love the dark. Lucky for us, we haven’t had a serious drought in a long time.”

“What are they supposed to look like?”

“No one knows. No one who has ever seen one has survived to talk about it.”

Before the guide could elaborate further, the German couple started complaining loudly about the biting flies rising from nearby stands of scrub laurel. When the other passengers chimed in, the show was over. Smiling for the first time all day, the guide cranked up the 6x6 and drove on, crossing and recrossing the meandering stream as the canyon grew ever wider. On the other side of a broad meadow, the rutted dirt track intersected a paved road.

A mile down the two-lane highway, they reached cultivated fields and widely spaced, ramshackle trailers and cinder-block houses of riverside farms that gradually gave way to the outskirts of a small New Mexico town. Little Pueblo had an aroma all its own: part fertilizer, part Mexican spices, part grain silo.

The driver stopped the 6x6 in the parking lot of the Rest Easy Motel, where the trip had begun five hours ago. As his passengers rose to their feet, he said, “If you’re looking for an authentic Native American meal tonight, try the fry bread tacos at Lupita’s, off the town square. They’re the real deal. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my auntie.”

Mildred had two more national parks to hit before her flight home on the weekend. And even though she did have time to stop and eat, dinner at Lupita’s was out of the question. She’d peeked in the café window earlier, while waiting for the tour to start. The pillowy, golden brown fry bread dripped with artery-plugging grease.

When Mildred left sleepy, pungent Little Pueblo in her rental car that afternoon, she was sure she’d seen the last of the place.

She was wrong about that, too.

Chapter One

Ryan Cawdor gnawed the final, juicy gobbet of flesh from the boar rib, then tossed the bone over his shoulder to the pack of dogs prowling the rows of long tables. The resulting, savage combat was barely audible over the general din.

The stone hall’s arched ceiling rang with the fiddles, squeezeboxes, trumpets and drums of a half-dozen, competing musical groups. It resounded with the clatter of knives on plates, the crash of shattering crockery, and from the far side of the room, with the scuffling, grunting chaos of a bare-knuckle brawl. The immense room was lit by bonfires roaring in massive fireplaces, torches burning in iron stanchions and candelabras spaced at intervals along the tables. Huge, faded tapestries draped the mortared walls. Dimly visible in the gloom overhead were strings of colorful pennants that hung from the high, wooden rafters.

After wiping his fingers on the table linen, Ryan paused to scratch the thick welt of scar that split the left side of his face from brow to cheek, zigzagging beneath the black patch that concealed an empty eye socket. A servant in a stained leather tunic placed a heaping platter at his elbow. Char-roasted backstraps of venison beckoned.

But first, something to cleanse the palate.

Ryan hefted a discus of sweet potato pie. The crisp, buttery crust fractured in his hands as he raised it to his mouth. In three quick bites he ate half of it. The rest he chucked over his shoulder. Drawing his panga from its leg sheath, he speared a backstrap and settled down to serious work.

It was gamy but good.

It was all good. And the courses kept coming.

Ryan ate like an animal, trying to satisfy a bottomless appetite. Though the food tasted delicious, it had no substance after he swallowed it. He had been eating for what seemed like hours, so long that his jaws ached from the chewing, and still his stomach felt hollow.

He sat in a throne chair on a dais, slightly elevated above the other diners. Beside him on a less ornate chair was his lover and battle mate, Krysty Wroth. The color of her low-cut, emerald-velvet gown matched the color of her eyes, and set off the blaze of her long sentient red hair, which had retracted into a mass of eager coils around her face. Perspiration glazed the silky cleft between her breasts and her cheeks were brightly flushed, consequences of the hall’s sweltering heat.

A wave of dizziness swept over Ryan, and he nearly passed out into his plate. He was so hungry he kept forgetting to breathe between bites. He forced himself to slow down and look up from the food.

The others seated at his table had come a long way to join the party.

From the far side of the grave, to be exact.

Prince Victor Boldt, Baron Nelson Mandeville, Mashashige, Yashimoto, Captain Pyra Quadde, Baron Sean Sharpe, Cissie Torrance, Baron Tourment and Ryan’s misshapen brother, Harvey, had thrown off their shrouds and were again housed in living flesh.

Despite the fact that Ryan had sealed their respective dooms, his old enemies seemed to bear him no grudge. They were in excellent spirits, gorging on the mounded banquet platters and drinking from steaming mugs of high-proof, buttered grog.

At the surrounding tables, through the shifting clouds of smoke, he glimpsed less familiar, but recognizable faces, the cannon fodder of a hundred battles, sec men and mercies who had fallen to his blaster or blade. It was among these triple stupes that the brawl had broken out.

Ryan was still pondering the puzzle of the party’s guest list when Harvey Cawdor got up from his chair. Death, it appeared, had shown him no more mercy than life: Harvey still had the cruelly twisted body he’d been born with. He hoisted his mug high in salute. “Here’s to Ryan Cawdor,” he cried, “the glorious hero of Deathlands!”

Harvey shouted over the cheers. “Considering what he did to each of us, I think one thing’s safe to say—we should have kept an eye out for him.”

The tired joke drew groans and boos. Boldt and Quadde pelted the deformed man with compressed wads of bread and bits of gristle.

“And how about that panga?” Harvey crowed, undeterred. “Sure, long is good when it comes to blades, but isn’t eighteen inches overcompensating for something?” He waggled his pinkie finger at Ryan.

A much better comedic effort.

Encouraged by the coarse laughter of his audience, Harvey climbed to a precarious perch on the seat of his chair. He plunged a hand into his fly and unlimbered himself. “Here’s to brotherhood!” he cried, urinating in a broad arc across the banquet table, spraying and scattering the guests on the other side.

“Judging from Little Harvey there,” Krysty remarked, “your knife must be a yard long.”

Her jibe put the diners over the top. As they howled in glee, they pounded on the table with their fists and the pommels of their knives. Harvey was so amused he fell off his chair.

Penis jokes and golden showers, normally grounds for bloodshed in Ryan’s world, raised no hackles this night. Everybody was having too good a time to take offense. The no-longer-dead hooted and backslapped one another as they reclaimed their places at the table.

Servants brought fresh platters of roasted meats, and long trays of cakes and pies. As everyone got busy, fiddle, squeezebox and drum started up right behind the guest of honor’s throne.

Krysty pointed at a corner of Ryan’s mouth. “You’re dripping,” she told him.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked down at a smear of red across his knuckles. Something tickled in the back of his throat, and he sneezed suddenly, and with great force. A gob of bloody matter shot out of his nose and landed on the tablecloth. As he stared at it, the gob fell apart, its minute components wriggling off in all directions. Ryan belched and tasted copper; his head started to spin, then his stomach convulsed. Hunching over, he vomited a shapeless, fluid mass onto his plate. Gray under their sheen of blood, like fibers of steel wool, the squirming wire worms gave off a rotten-egg stench.