The Crystal City Page 0,108

that his sister Margaret had no high opinion of Calvin and Arthur Stuart kind of suspected that if Calvin died it might ease her mind. But Alvin wouldn't feel that way, of course. He still thought of Calvin as nothing worse than a foolish little brother who would grow up someday and became a decent man.

"And all the others," said Alvin, "if they're smart enough to be saved."

"But how am I going to get there in time to warn them?"

"Two things," said Alvin. "First, you'll run with the greensong."

"But it's desert between here and there."

"The greensong doesn't depend on the color green, really," said Alvin. "It conies from life, and you'll see, the desert is packed with living things. They're just thirstier, is all."

"But I can't do the greensong alone."

La Tia spoke up. "I give you a charm like I made before, only better."

"And I'll run with you the first hour or so, to get you started. Arthur Stuart, you've passed the threshold, don't you realize it? You're the first one to do it, but you're a man who wasn't born to be a maker, but he's learned makery all the same."

"Not as good as you. Nowhere near."

"Maybe not," said Alvin, "but good enough-and the greensong's not makery anyway. I learned it as surely as you will, and you get better at feeling it the more you do it. You'll see."

"And somehow I'll find the way?"

"The closer you get to Mexico, the more folks will know how to point out the road."

"And if somebody decides my heart would make a dandy sacrifice?"

"Then you'll use the powers you've learned to get away. I don't just want you to deliver the message, I want you to come back safe and sound."

"Oh," said Arthur Stuart, realizing. "You want me to bring these white men with me."

"I want you to bring them as far as it takes to make them safe," said Alvin, "but on no account is that to be here with us. Get them to the coast and put them on a boat-as many as will come-and then you come on back."

"I don't think a soul's gonna listen to me," said Arthur Stuart. "When did Calvin ever listen to you?"

"Calvin will do what he wants," said Alvin. "But I won't let him die because he didn't know something I could have told him."

"I just hope I get there before the volcano blows," said Arthur Stuart. "What if I get lost?"

"Don't you worry," said La Tia. "You be carrying the volcano with you."

The other part of the errand? "How can I do that?"

Tenskwa-Tawa answered. "We have awakened the giant under the earth," he said. "It flows now hotter and hotter. But what we couldn't do was control the moment when it erupted. Or where. But La Tia, she knows the old African ways of calling to the earth. She's made two charms. They won't work until they're burned. But where they're burned, and what you say when you burn them, you'll have to memorize that and teach it to my people who are there."

"Why two charms?" asked Arthur.

"The one she call smoke from the ground," said La Tia. "The other one, she call the hot red blood out of the earth."

"My people," said Tenskwa-Tawa, "will tell the Mexica people what day the smoke will first appear, and when it happens, they'll believe. We want to give them plenty of time to leave. The idea isn't to kill Mexicas. The idea is to show them that a greater power rejects their lies about what God wants them to do."

"We're trying to break the power of the priests who sacrifice human beings," said Alvin.

"Three days after the first charm," said Tenskwa-Tawa, "they'll use the second one."

"And the volcano blows up."

"We don't know how bad it will be," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "We can't control what the giant does, once it's awake."

"What about the reds who work the charm?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"We hope that they'll get away in time," said Tenskwa-Tawa.

"I don't know how fast she work," said La Tia. "I never make this kind before."

"How do you know it'll work at all, then?" said Arthur Stuart.

It seemed a practical question to him, but La Tia shot him a glare. "I be La Tia, me," she said. "Other people charms, they maybe don't work."

Arthur Stuart grinned at her. "I hope I grow up to be perfect like you."

She apparently didn't detect the irony in his words. "You be so lucky," she said.

Arthur Stuart spent the next hour studying