Pastwatch_ The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus Part 29

Consent was freely given, and Juana and Henrique stayed another week in order to lead the ceremonies involved in naming the Ciudad Isabella.

When they left, the serious work began. Most of the fleet would return to Caribia soon, but only the crews would be Caribian. The pa.s.sengers would be Spanish-priests and merchantmen. Cristoforo's son Diego had turned down the wealth that his father offered him, and asked instead to be allowed to be one of the Franciscan contingent among the missionaries to Caribia. Discreet inquiry located Cristoforo's other son, Fernando. He had been brought up to take part in the business of his grandfather, a merchant of Crdoba. Cristoforo invited him to Ciudad Isabella, where he recognized him as a son and gave him one of the Caribian ships to hold his trade goods. Together they decided to name the ship Beatrice de Crdoba, after Fernando's mother. Fernando was also pleased at the name that his father had given to the daughter who became queen of Caribia. It is doubtful that Cristoforo ever let him know that there might be some ambiguity about which Beatrice the queen was named for.

Cristoforo watched from his palace as eight hundred Caribian ships set sail for the new world, carrying his first two sons on their different missions there. He watched as another hundred and fifty ships set forth in groups of three or four or five to carry amba.s.sadors and traders to every port of Europe and to every city of the Muslims. He watched as amba.s.sadors and princes, great traders and scholars and churchmen came to Ciudad Isabella to teach the Caribians and learn from them.

Surely G.o.d had fulfilled the promises made on that beach near Lagos. Because of Cristoforo the word of G.o.d was being carried to millions. Kingdoms had fallen at his feet, and the wealth that had pa.s.sed through his hands, under his control, was beyond anything he could have conceived of as a child in Genova. The weaver's son who had once cowered in fear at the cruel doings of great men had become one of the greatest of all, and had done it without cruelty. On his knees Cristoforo gave thanks many times for G.o.d's goodness to him.

But in the silence of the night, on his balcony overlooking the sea, he thought back to his neglected wife Felipa; to his patient lover Beatrice in Crdoba; to Lady Beatrice de Bobadilla, who had died before he could return to her in triumph in Gomera. He thought back to his brothers and sisters in Genova, who were all in the grave before his fame could ever reach them. He thought of the years he might have spent with Diego, with Fernando, if he had never left Spain. Is there no triumph without loss, without pain, without regret?

He thought then of Diko. She could never have been the woman of his dreams; there were times when he suspected that she had once loved another man, too, that was as lost to her as both his Beatrices were to him. Diko had been his teacher, his partner, his lover, his companion, the mother of many children, his true queen when they had shaped a great kingdom out of a thousand villages on fifty islands and two continents. He loved her. He was grateful to her. She had been a gift of G.o.d to him.

Was it so disloyal of him, then, to wish for one hour's conversation with Beatrice de Bobadilla? To wish that he could kiss Beatrice de Crdoba again, and hear her laugh loudly at his stories? To wish that he could show his charts and logbooks to Felipa, so she would know that his mad obsession had been worth the pain it caused to all of them?

There is no good thing that does not cost a dear price. That is what Cristoforo learned by looking back upon his life. Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price. That is what you gave me, Lord.

Pedro de Salcedo and his wife, Chipa, reached Ciudad Isabella in the fall of 1522, bringing letters to Coln from his daughter, his son-in-law, and, most important, from his Diko. They found the old man napping on his balcony, the smell of the sea strong in the rising breeze that promised rain from the west. Pedro was loath to wake him, but Chipa insisted that he wouldn't want to wait. When Pedro shook him gently, Coln recognized them at once. "Pedro," he murmured. "Chipa."

"Letters," Pedro said. "From Diko, most of all."

Coln smiled, took the letters, and laid them unopened in his lap. He closed his eyes again, and it seemed he meant to doze off again. Pedro and Chipa lingered, watching him, with affection, with nostalgia for early days and great achievements. Then, suddenly, he seemed to rouse from his slumber. His eyes flew open and he raised one hand, his finger pointing out to sea. "Constantinople!" he cried.

Then he fell back in his chair, and his hand dropped into his lap. What dream was this? they wondered.

A few moments later, Pedro realized that there was a different quality to the old man's posture now. Ali, yes, that's the difference: He isn't breathing now. He bent down and kissed his forehead. "Good-bye, my Captain-General," he said. Chipa also kissed his white hair. "Go to G.o.d, my friend," she murmured. Then they left to tell the palace staff that the great discoverer was dead.

Epilogue.

In the year 1955, a Caribian archaeologist, heading a dig near the traditional location of the landing place of Cristobal Coln, observed that the nearly perfect skull found that day was heavier than it should be. He noted the anomaly, and a few weeks later, when he had occasion to return to the University of Ankuash, he had it x-rayed. It showed a metal plate embedded inside the skull.

Inside the skull? Impossible. Only upon close examination did he find the hairline marks of surgery that had made the metal implant possible. But bones did not heal this neatly. What kind of surgery was this, to leave so little damage? It was not possible in 1955, let alone in the late fifteenth century, to do a job like this.

Photographing every step of the process, and with several a.s.sistants as witness, he sawed open the skull and removed the plate. It was of an alloy he had never seen before; later testing would reveal that it was an alloy that had never existed, to anyone's knowledge. But the metal was hardly the issue. For once it was detached from the skull, it was found that the metal separated into four thin leaves, on which there was a great deal of writing - all of it almost microscopically small. It was written in four languages panish, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. It was full of circ.u.mlocutions, for it was speaking of concepts which could not be readily expressed in the vocabulary available in any of those languages in 1500. But the message, once deciphered, was clear enough. It told which radio frequency to broadcast on, and in what pattern, in order to trigger a response from a buried archive.

The broadcast was made. The archive was found. The story it told was incredible and yet could not be doubted, for the archive itself was clearly the product of a technology that had never existed on Earth. When the story became clear, a search was made for two other archives. Together, they told a detailed history, not only of the centuries and millennia of human life before 1492, but also of a strange and terrifying history that had not happened, of the years between 1492 and the making of the archives. If there had been any doubt before about the authenticity of the find, all was dispelled when digs at the locations specified in the archives led to spectacular archaeological finds confirming everything that could be confirmed.

Had there once been a different history? No, two different histories, both of them obliterated by interventions in the past?

Suddenly the legends and rumors about Coln's wife Diko and Yax's mentor One-Hunahpu began to make sense. The more obscure stories of a Turk who supposedly sabotaged the Pinta and was killed by Coln's crew were revived and compared to the plans talked about in the archives. Obviously, the travelers had succeeded in journeying into their past, all three of them. Obviously they had succeeded.

Two of the travelers already had tombs and monuments. All that was left was to build a third tomb there on the Haitian sh.o.r.e, lay the skull within it, and inscribe on the outside the name Kemal, a date of birth that would not come for centuries, and as the date of death, 1492.