jedishampoo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jedishampoo) wrote2009-09-29 10:18 am
jedishampoo) wrote2009-09-29 10:18 am
Entry tags:
Fic: The Lost City of Paititi, Part 1, Hakkai/Gojyo, AU, NSFW
Title: The Lost City of Paititi and the Legendary Golden Phallus
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jedishampoo
Rating: NC-l7
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
Summary: When jungle explorers Gojyo Shawn and Hakkai Childs meet, it’s the beginning of a beautiful partnership.
Warnings: Mention of past incest (canon, yo); language; cliffhangers
Author's notes: Written for my dearestkansouame in the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
7thnight_smut exchange. She wanted an archaeology adventure/romance in the jungle with cliffhangers. Dear readers, if you know anything about real archaeology or Incan civilization, please ignore such knowledge when reading this story. Mwah to my lovely beta sharpeslass, and to lauand, who very kindly provided assistance with the Spanish; any remaining errors are my own. Loads of love and thanks to rroselavy for her work as the Merciful Goddess in organizing this exchange.
Click To Read The Lost City of Paititi, Part 1
Hakkai put his left foot in front of his right, then paused and breathed. He took another step, right in front of left, and then paused again while his Machiguenga guide slashed his machete, carving into the jungle before them. He breathed again, deeply in the thin air of the high-altitude rainforest where everything was slippery and slimy and hot then cold: step, pause, breathe, step, pause, step-slash-breathe.
Never would he have thought he’d miss the dry air of Egypt quite so very much, or the chilly, far-from-equatorial dampness of home. He’d not trained well for Peru but who’d have known that Genjo would have sustained that injury or that the Club would want someone in South America quite so desperately? But they’d received word of clues to the lost Incan city of Paititi and begged Hakkai to go to Peru as their representative. He’d merely been a replacement for Genjo but he did know the languages and, after all, there were petroglyphs to be deciphered and a golden phallus to be located. A legendary golden phallus, to be exact.
Step-slash-breathe. When his group reached a small clearing Hakkai was so numbly grateful to sit for a moment on a rock in the sun, drying himself like a lizard, that, at first, his brain didn’t register the commotion. He turned and his dulled senses were assailed by a cacophony of gunfire and shouting, a blaze of fire and sunlight on metal. Something slammed into his skull from behind, sharp and hot and painful, machete or club it didn’t matter because his glasses flew off and before he fell he saw, in the midst of it all like calm in the chaos, a pair of binoculars with black hair above and a sly grin below...
***
“Oi! You alive?”
...Hakkai didn’t know where he was or why it was so hot and noisy or why the unfamiliar voice was yammering at him in Spanish. He only knew that his head hurt terribly, so much so that he didn’t want to open his eyes. In fact, he did not particularly even want to be alive.
“Nnnn,” he moaned, hoping the voice would take the hint and go away and let him die.
“He lives! Haha. Will you get that water for me, baby?” the voice said, a deep, drawly sort of voice speaking Spanish with an American accent, the sort of voice that might have been soothing in circumstances where Hakkai’s head did not feel like it was being scraped open with an adze.
“Nnngoawaynnn...” he said, hoping a stronger hint might be more successful in communicating his desire to die alone.
“Hey! And you speak English. Awesome,” the voice said, in English. “Wakey, wakey! I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Damn you to hell,” Hakkai whispered. His arm hurt but he lifted it to his forehead, to shield his eyes from the glare he knew was waiting for him ere he opened them. It still hurt when he did open them. His missing glasses and the pain of his headache blurred his vision, but he could make out a man with a tanned face peering at him from under a pile of shockingly red hair. The man, who was sitting next to Hakkai’s bed or pallet or whatever he was laid out upon, turned to look up at a brightly dressed girl. He took something from her.
“Thanks, María-- hey, you boiled this, right, babe?” the man said to the girl in Spanish. At her Sí, señor Joe he thanked her and turned back to Hakkai. “Water. I’ve got aspirin, too. Here. Oh, man, what pretty eyes you’ve got!”
“Nnnnthankgod,” Hakkai said.
“Oi! Don’t sit up. Just raise your head a little.” El señor Joe shoved something between Hakkai’s lips with two fingers clean fingernails I think and then tilted a cup of water boiled he’d said into Hakkai’s mouth. Hakkai swallowed and swallowed some more and closed his eyes for a second or two...
...When he opened them again, he was alone and the light in the room had changed. Blessedly, his headache was almost gone; the painkillers had helped. He sat up. He appeared to be in a blurry sort of hovel. Further examination revealed his glasses sitting, unbroken, on a scarred, rickety table next to his pallet. Hakkai put them on.
Hovel. Oh, yes. Peru. Paititi, Lost Golden City of the Inca. Golden phalluses. El señor Joe, however, was not part of Hakkai’s long-term memory. Who was he? And had he left in the time that Hakkai had fallen back asleep?
“Hello?” Hakkai called out.
“Hey! You’re awake again, man. You probably shouldn’ta slept with that head injury, but it’s too late to worry about it now.”
There was a rustling and el señor Joe hovered in the doorway, one hand holding the dirty canvas door-flap open against the doorjamb and the other perched on his hip. He was wearing well-cut khaki trousers and a khaki shirt. It looked like he was posing for a glamour shot of “tall, handsome, American explorer.”
His startling red hair was his most striking feature but his face was slenderly pretty-- not usually a word Hakkai might use in reference to a man, but it was a good word for el señor Joe. He had only two tiny scars on his left cheek to keep him from being overwhelmingly good-looking.
“Where am I, please?” Hakkai asked.
“Hey-ey, and you’re British. You’re in Pantiacolla. Peru. I hope you were expecting that part of it, anyway. María here’s brother--” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder-- “found you yesterday, on the trail to Mameria, bleeding. They called me ‘cause they figured I’d know the gringo. So. Do you remember how you got all beaten up?”
“You are... who?” Hakkai asked, slowly.
“Oh, right. Gojyo Shawn.” Gojyo stuck out his tanned hand with its clean fingernails. Hakkai clasped it, still somewhat weakly.
The somewhat infamous Gojyo Shawn. “I’ve heard of you,” Hakkai said, neutrally, and released Gojyo’s hand. “You used to work for UCLA. You’d been pursued to join the Club at one time. And I’ve heard other things.”
“Heh. I hate clubs. And UCLA didn’t believe in-- well. That’s me. Who are you, my pretty-green-eyed gringo?”
Was the somewhat infamous Gojyo Shawn flirting with him? Reportedly he was a bit of a rogue in the world of exploring archaeologists, with a few other rumors surrounding him. No, thank you, Hakkai thought. “Childs. Hakkai Childs.”
Gojyo’s red eyebrows rose. “Oh. I’ve heard of you, too. Good work at Ixtolna. You’re a languages expert. You’re looking for Paititi, too, aren’t you?”
Paititi, the lost city of gold, hidden before the conquistadores had come. Hakkai had been attacked. This man, the infamous Gojyo Shawn, was Hakkai’s rival. Hakkai needed to proceed cautiously. “What makes you say that?”
“No need to get all snooty on me. ‘S the only lost city in these parts that the world’s got a lead on right now,” Gojyo laughed. “Plus, I heard the Explorer’s Club was heading here. Where’s your team, anyway? Don’t tell me you came alone? Lost your funding?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know where they are, but if you’ll please lend me a cellular or satellite phone, I’ll find out. Then I’ll be out of your hair. I thank you for your assistance.”
Gojyo’s brown eyes narrowed. “What the hell? Why the snippy attitude all of a sudden?”
Hakkai sniffed and gave Gojyo a pitying look. “Would you trust you? I’m alone, and don’t wish to divulge my reasons for being in Peru. And I’d heard you were arrested for looting. More than once. Apparently you don’t know how to follow the proper matrices.”
“Yeah?” Gojyo shoved a cigarette between his lips and stared at Hakkai as if daring him to say something about it. He lit the cigarette and pfted smoke out of his grinning mouth around it. “Well, I’ve heard things about you, too. Heard you dated your sister. A fellow member of your Explorer’s Club.”
“What?” Hakkai’s jaw dropped in his shock. What sort of clod would bring up such a thing? “That was... none of your business.”
“Small world we work in, eh? So, again. Where’s your team? Listen. If I’da wanted to kill you, I woulda done it, already.”
Hakkai took a deep breath. What Gojyo had said was true. Furthermore, he and the locals had assisted Hakkai when he’d been at his most vulnerable. He needed an ally, even a disgustingly saucy one. “I came with a Club expedition. I think... we were attacked.”
Gojyo gave his cigarette a satisfied puff. “Ah. Well, jungle’s a dangerous place. But you survived. I’m looking for Paititi, lost city of riches. And I’m gonna find it, ‘cause I have the magic key. I could use a language-man, though. Wanna join me? Get one back on whoever attacked ya?”
“No, thank you. But I would still like to make a phone call.”
Gojyo scowled at him again. “Well, go ahead, but by the time you’ve got another team it’ll be too late. ‘Cause I’ll have found Paititi, already.”
“Found it and looted it?”
“Hah! Just you and the Explorer’s Club wait. I’ve already got the--”
Whatever boast Gojyo was going to make was drowned out by a loud thup-thupping noise that came from outside. There were shouts, in Spanish and Quechua, by the door.
Hakkai felt along his trouser-legs and into his boots. Not there. He looked at the wide-eyed Gojyo.
“I had a knife. A rather large one--”
“You mean the sword?” Gojyo bent down and reached for something outside the door. When he straightened he was holding Hakkai’s-- admittedly large-- dagger.
Hakkai swung his legs out of bed and jumped to his feet. Adrenaline combated his momentary dizziness and he was able to grab the knife before Gojyo could stop him. His glare backed Gojyo out the door.
“Don’t kill me, man. I ain’t judging you for sleepin’ with your sister. I’ve done some kinky shit in my day...”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Hakkai said, and ducked under the door-flap.
***
Outside, the dust of Pantiacolla had been kicked up into the hot, humid air to make a sticky sort of dirt-plaster. The wind was being whipped by the blades of a big, military-style helicopter that hovered over the town center. What looked like the entire population of the town had turned out to join Hakkai and Gojyo, and they all, thirty or so of them, stood in a prayer-circle of shielded eyes to watch it land.
The helicopter touched down and the blades slowed to a more casual fwip-fwip that let the dust settle a little. A handsome, black-haired man in crisp black fatigues stepped out of the helicopter. He grinned at the gathered people in general then looked directly at Hakkai and Gojyo--
-- binoculars, black hair and white teeth--
Hakkai tightened his grip on the handle of his knife. This man was responsible for whatever had befallen him earlier, he was sure of it--
“Ukoku,” Gojyo drawled at the man’s grin. Gojyo’s hand rested in an odd position at his hip, and Hakkai realized that Gojyo had a weapon concealed there. “You asshole. Thought you’d given up and gone to Venezuela this year.”
“God, you’re cute,” Ukoku of the black hair and black suit said, smiling. He pulled off his sunglasses and looked pityingly at Hakkai. “Childs, right? I’ve seen your picture in the Club directory. Ukoku Santiago. I’m pleased to meet you. I heard about the attack on your team and came to offer my assistance.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Hakkai said. He’d heard of Santiago. He was the showy sort of explorer who had a private fortune and didn’t need to rely on grants, who showed up and claimed large, important finds while other, better explorers were begging for funding. Hakkai had never heard that he was dangerous, but in person he looked slick and treacherous and smarmy and Hakkai hated him on the spot.
Ukoku continued. “Many of your men were found dead near Mameria. I was sorry when I heard that. I can offer you a place on my team, however. I could use a languages expert of your skill and reputation.”
Hakkai hadn’t known about his men for sure. He trusted Ukoku less than ever. “I--”
“Oh, g’wan, get the fuck out of here, Ukoku,” Gojyo interrupted. Hakkai glanced over and was surprised to see Gojyo grinning and gesturing with his cigarette. “Get back in your ‘copter and fly around some more-- all you’ll see’s jungle. What I have, you can’t buy with your money.”
“You’re giving me a hard-on by being so goddamned sexy,” Ukoku drawled as he glanced back at Gojyo. “I don’t need to buy anything, and I know you don’t have the Golden Phallus yet.”
“Not gonna be your ultimate sex toy,” Gojyo said. Hakkai thought privately that the Peruvian jungle was certainly queer this time of year.
Ukoku spread his arms into a wide and dramatic pose. “The ultimate key. Our Incan goddess Mama Pacha will lead me to it with her petroglyph porn and her grainy, dragoness fertility, and I’ll squeeze that golden dick into her breadbasket in Mameria, just like her chthonic husband-god Mr. Pachacamac, and Paititi will open to me like Mama Pacha’s flower-strewn vagina. Especially once Mr. Childs joins my team and has a look at some of the fascinating glyphs I’ve photographed.”
He looked smugly at Hakkai, who hated him more than ever, mostly for his smarminess and not for his pornographic interpretation of Incan legend. There was something else, too... “I’m quite sorry,” Hakkai said with a small bow. “I’ve already made arrangements to work with Mr. Shawn, and, after all his help, it would be rude to go back on my word.”
To Gojyo’s credit he didn’t betray his surprise. “Yeah, Ukoku. See ya in Mama Pacha’s open flowery womb. I’ll save ya some sloppy seconds.”
Ukoku merely smiled, small and tight. “Very well. I’ll see you on the Inca Road, gentlemen. If you change your minds, I know you’ve got my number, Gojyo.” Ukoku winked and then whipped around on one heel and slid back into the helicopter through a door held open by two black-suited Peruvians. The vehicle was just as noisy and dusty-messy taking off as it had been landing.
“I’ll be ready to leave in a couple of days,” Gojyo said as he turned to grin at Hakkai. “You won’t regret joining me, gorgeous. I get results.”
“Perhaps I can teach you some archaeological manners.”
“You can try.”
They returned to the hut María shared with her brother and told them muchas gracias for their help and Gojyo slipped them some nuevos soles from his pocket. They gathered the rest of the items they’d found on Hakkai-- not much outside of his bag-- and Gojyo led Hakkai to the camp he shared with his native guide team.
“I’d like to find out what you have,” Hakkai admitted, once they were in safer territory. “I think Ukoku, or his men, were the ones who attacked me. Can your people fight him?”
Gojyo’s smile grew wider. “Not a concern. Ukoku won’t attack me. I have something he needs-- the magic key-- right here.” Gojyo pointed at his head. “I wasn’t kidding when I said he couldn’t buy what I had.”
Gojyo told Hakkai some things he already knew: the legend of how the Golden Phallus of Pachacamac had been lost centuries ago and was supposedly hidden somewhere at the end of the Inca Road. How the Incan town of Mameria had been discovered by the French in the 1970s, and how Mameria had supposedly been a significant farming community of the lost golden Incan city of Paititi. One legend said that, in Mameria, were instructions on how to use the Golden Phallus of Pachacamac to open a hidden door in the Mamerian temple, and that behind the hidden door was the secret to finding Paititi. Stone-writing had indeed been discovered a year or so ago in a temple room of Mameria, but it was writing that could not be deciphered. The Incans had created no system of writing of their own, so the existence of the petroglyphs was a mystery in and of itself.
Until now. Gojyo then told Hakkai something he didn’t know: one of Gojyo’s girlfriends was a professor at the University of Lima, and she’d discovered the “Rosetta Stone of the Incas” near Machu Picchu, city of the gods; it was a silver tablet, supposedly created by Incan clerics, that could interpret the petroglyphs at the Mameria site. And that professor had shown Gojyo the Machu Picchu tablet and her personal analysis of how it could be used for translation.
Professor Yané had not gone on the expedition herself because she was not an explorer, but a digger and cataloguer. She’d asked Gojyo to find Paititi first, and then she would acquire funding and plan expeditions to excavate the city. Furthermore, she’d not sold the information elsewhere or told any of her colleagues at the university. Or so Gojyo claimed. Gojyo didn’t even have a copy of the tablet or Yané’s analysis, only a photographic memory. Or so he claimed.
Ukoku had learned, somehow, that Gojyo had secret and valuable information. Gojyo said he’d already refused Ukoku, both as a lover and as an archaeological partner. Or so he claimed.
Hakkai, when it was his turn to talk, revealed very little, though admittedly he’d started out on this expedition with much less information than Gojyo. The Explorer’s Club had sent Hakkai with a wish for him to attempt to read the Mameria petroglyphs, not from the few, grainy photos but in their native habitat-- Hakkai’s specialty was archaeo-geologic context. Genjo had shared that specialty. Hakkai wondered if one of the responsible members at the Club had known more about recent discoveries than they’d let on.
He was saddened by the deaths of his team-mates, and annoyed by the prospect of traveling with Gojyo. But privately he was feeling a little excited. It had become apparent to him that they stood a very good chance of getting very close to Paititi. What a find-- an unsacked Incan city! And there were petroglyphs that only he-- and perhaps the absent Genjo-- could fully interpret.
For a moment Hakkai pictured Gojyo flirting with Genjo, were Genjo here as originally intended. The thought should have amused him greatly-- Genjo was extremely handsome but not a man to suffer lightheartedness or foolishness of any kind, and his put-downs were legendary. Instead the thought made Hakkai feel rather irritated.
Hakkai banished his own momentary discomfort with a small, secret, extra excitement at the thought of getting revenge on Ukoku Santiago.
***
By the time they’d been on the road a day or so, however, Hakkai was severely regretting his choice.
For one thing, the travel was as difficult as ever. They were on the Inca Road, heading in the opposite direction from where Hakkai had originally planned to go-- why visit Mameria before they had the Golden Phallus? as Gojyo had pointed out-- but it was as humid and hot and cold and slimy as before. The jungle was impenetrable by wheeled vehicles and the high altitude and thick, green-leafed canopy made helicopter travel dangerous, so the area still had to be explored by foot. Knowing that didn’t make it any less horrible.
And for another thing, Hakkai found himself becoming increasingly annoyed by Gojyo. The man, like a native, didn’t seem to feel the discomfort of their travel. The high altitude gave him no headaches and he seemed perfectly happy no matter the temperature. When Hakkai was removing layers because he was frying or bundling up on cold ridges, Gojyo simply wore a light jacket and whistled and walked as if he didn’t feel a thing.
And Gojyo flirted with him. Twice, already, he’d tried to coax Hakkai into stripping naked and joining him in clear mountain streams after stripping naked himself, lean and laughing and pshawing at Hakkai’s annoyance and making the guides snicker with his antics.
“Don’t worry, ‘Kai. I think you’re totally hot but I won’t put the moves on ya unless you ask me,” he’d said, brown eyes gleaming under his wet hair.
“My name is not ‘Kai,” Hakkai had told him.
Gojyo was generally disgraceful, doing that and trying to convince Hakkai to share some of the potent local wine as they sat around their campfire. Each night, instead of resting for the next day, Gojyo and the men would drink and laugh and make bawdy jokes about Englishmen and American women. Hakkai tried to ignore them, but it seemed the Peruvians had a never-ending supply of liquor.
And Gojyo seemed sloppy. He didn’t photograph or compare to sat-photo any of the Inca Road landmarks they passed, just hand-swept ivy or snakes off the stone stelae, glanced at them, and said “yep, we’re going the right way.” Hakkai had been unable to clean up Gojyo’s methods, and Gojyo’s men followed his orders first and Hakkai’s second.
“No use relying on computers out here,” Gojyo told him one evening around the campfire. “It’s not the environment for ‘em. The only electronic doodad I want out here is my GPS beacon. Greatest invention ever.” Gojyo patted the TycoSat beacon he kept in his hip-bag.
“One of them, at least,” Hakkai agreed. He took a sip from his tin cup of wine. He’d given in to Gojyo’s entreaties to have a tipple, wondering if it might not dull his altitude headache, since the natives swore it wouldn’t give him one. It tasted pretty good, at least once his tongue un-numbed itself after every sip.
“The greatest.” Gojyo was slurring.
“I do like to use sonar. Especially to find underground caverns,” Hakkai pointed out.
“Yeah, but you gotta have a laptop to run it,” Gojyo said.
“Well, you should have a laptop, anyway, to catalog everything and for reference.”
“Told ya, I have a photographic memory. I had hippie parents but I was still top of my class at UCLA. When you think you might need it, ask me and I’ll draw you a picture of the Machu Picchu tablet.”
“Ah.”
So Gojyo was not stupid, perhaps, but Hakkai would still wish a little more order on him. Hakkai wanted order and he wanted professionalism. As a scientific field, archaeology had seemed perfect. He’d had some wild travels in his youth but then there’d been that whole ordeal with Kanan and finding out-- well, order and professionalism kept him happy and he had a good reputation and success with funding and with expeditions.
Until this trip. It felt like a boys’ adventure novel.
Another reason you chose archaeology, Hakkai’s brain reminded him. Hakkai took another sip of booze to quiet his brain. Gojyo was not quiet, was chanting something into the fire.
“Mameria. Mah-meeee-ria. Ma-meeeria.” The moonlight and the light from the flames made Gojyo’s hair seem even brighter at night than it did during the day. Hakkai wondered where such a hair-color had come from; he’d gone to school in Scotland but he’d never seen hair like that. It was natural, at least it seemed so, based on Gojyo’s nude swims. Yes, Hakkai had looked, but how could he not have? Gojyo may have been a bit of a mess but he was certainly worth looking at.
“It’s pronounced ‘Mah-meh-ria,’” Hakkai told him, looking away and out into the moonlit jungle. It was cool and clammy at night and he was glad for the fire, for warmth. The native men tossed cubes of a local resin into the fire and the resulting smoke both smelled good, like sandalwood, and kept the mosquitoes away. Not to mention the jaguars. “Mah-meh. You do speak Spanish.”
“I know. I just like saying it.” Gojyo took a deep draught from his cup of booze. “Mameeeria. It sounds like something. Boobs. What’d Ukoku call it? The breadbasket? Mama Pacha was the planting and fertility goddess. She’ll like having her golden dick back.”
Hakkai rolled his eyes. In addition to his other vices, Gojyo was too...sexually overt. The problem wasn’t that he made it clear that he liked both men and women; Hakkai had been experimental in his own youth. The problem was that Gojyo never turned his overt sexual charm off. Even as a very young man Hakkai had quickly realized that sex only led to trouble. Big trouble, in some cases.
Gojyo seemed to be reading his mind. “Can ya tell me about what really happened with your sister, man?”
Hakkai rolled his eyes again. He was, surprisingly, not angry at Gojyo’s nosiness; it was just one of those things that one didn’t discuss, even in impolite society. “Are you being prurient? I told you: it’s none of your business.”
“Just askin’,” Gojyo grinned, unabashed. “Told you I’d been kinky myself.”
“It wasn’t kinky!” Hakkai retorted before he could stop himself. The booze was loosening his tongue. He set his cup aside; one of the guides grabbed it quickly and finished it for him. Still, he’d already said too much. He might as well finish the conversation for good. “We’d been adopted separately. It was a misunderstanding. There were no offspring and it’s over and-- well, it’s still none of your business.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, ah.”
Gojyo grinned, his smile too real and his teeth brighter than the moon in the dark, prettier than his hair. “I’m glad to know things. It makes me feel more comfortable working with ya, to know ya. Wanna know anything about me? Ask away!”
Why did you choose a scientific field when you’re so clearly not suited for it? How did you get your scars? Where in your hippie ancestry did you get that amazing hair-color?
Sloppy and sexually overt. Order and professionalism.
“No, thank you,” Hakkai said.
They just had nothing in common.
***
Step-pause-breathe. Step-pause-breathe-wince-oww!
The natives had absolutely lied, and when Hakkai finally found the Golden Phallus and found Paititi and didn’t need their guides anymore, he would kill them all. With his bare hands. Because the local liquor had, indeed, given him a hangover worse than his previous altitude-headache. And to top it off, Gojyo was trying to get them killed.
The TycoSat receiver had told them they were within a few kilometers of the area they’d agreed upon as their first search-zone and the probable location of the Golden Phallus. Hakkai looked right at the relatively flat path heading east to sloping Mount Catinti, which was near their destination. Then he looked to the left at the narrow, treacherous path up a mountain and across rocky ridges, the one that Gojyo claimed was the actual Inca Road.
“The Inca used to go up this running. Or with llamas,” Gojyo pointed out as he pointed up the mountain. “It’s part of the road we need to follow. C’mon-- it’s perfectly safe.”
“It wasn’t safe hundreds of years ago, and it’s certainly not safe now that centuries of erosion have had their chance to work on it. We can reach Mount Catinti via this flatter path, and then, hopefully, backtrack just a few hundred meters.” Hakkai glanced up from his folded-out map to look at Nunco, their lead guide. “Can we backtrack to the Inca Road from Mount Catinti?” he asked in Spanish.
“I don’t know,” Nunco shrugged.
“See? He doesn’t know,” Gojyo pointed out. “I do, though. I got good instincts for these things.”
“El señor Joe has very good instincts,” the normally-taciturn Nunco confirmed.
It was true, Hakkai had learned. He’d been impressed already by Gojyo’s choice of narrowed-search zone, his choice of team, and other things he’d done on instinct. But Hakkai had also decided that Gojyo was often suicidally reckless. Why else would he bathe naked in possibly-piranha-infested mountain streams in Amazonia? Hakkai liked bathing with his nice, shallow, collapsible bucket. Why would Gojyo travel without most necessary electronics? Hakkai terribly missed his laptop and cellular phone, both lost when he’d been attacked.
And why did Gojyo have to choose this path? Hakkai preferred safer roads. He’d climbed mountains before, but always in very dry climates, climates sans slime. And never with headaches this bad.
Hakkai looked at Nunco. “Would you actually follow this path he’s chosen?”
“Sí.”
“Dammit,” Hakkai muttered. He folded and stowed his map and pulled out his sturdiest ropes. “We’re doing it very slowly, then.”
“Of course,” Gojyo said. Hakkai made the mistake of glancing at him. Gojyo was smiling so widely and standing just so with his boot propped on a rock and leaning toward Hakkai on his knee and looking so incredibly sexy that Hakkai had to look away quickly. He looked back up at the mountain to sober his thoughts.
The first stretch of the path was an ascent that hugged the mountain in a spiral, centimeters wide like it’d been cut into the rock with a very small chisel by a very patient and very slender person. The Inca had been excellent road-builders; Hakkai could not believe that this was part of the Inca Road. None of the archaeological treatises or reports he’d read on Peruvian expeditions had mentioned such a location.
But then, none of the previous explorers had found the Golden Phallus, either. Or even the end of the Inca Road. Just jungle, and sometimes death.
They went up single file. Gojyo had chosen the front position and no one had argued him for it. They all clung to one length of rope, lightly in case one slipped step caused a man-avalanche down the mountain.
Every ten steps or so Hakkai could hear a chink and a thunk as Gojyo or someone up above him drove a metal spike into the wall or, somewhere below him, pulled the lowest spike out. If the men had carried a little less liquor then they might have managed more mountain-climbing supplies, Hakkai thought uncharitably. They might have to come back this way, eventually, and pre-planted rope-spikes would make the dangerous descent a little more safe.
Step-chink-thunk-winceow, step-chink-thunk-throb--
“Haha ha!” That last had been Gojyo, somewhere above him. “Oi, Hakkai!”
“Yes?”
“There’s a stela in the wall, about fifteen meters above you. Look it over when you go past. Ha! I knew this was the right path.”
Hakkai sighed and resisted the urge to growl in frustration. “How exciting it must be for you to be always right,” he called up.
“I love it when you’re all British and dry at me.” Gojyo sounded fond and happy, and for a few minutes Hakkai felt happy, too, as he imagined Gojyo’s smile. He nearly forgot the peril of his situation. He even chuckled when he passed the stone shield-idol set into the wall, its design only lightly eroded. It showed a stylized picture of a man on a vertical path. Incan for Beware Steep Road?
A few minutes later, Gojyo must have reached the top. “Whew,” he called down. Then, “Holy shit!”
A few minutes after that, Hakkai crested the top as well. They stood on a little flat plateau next to--
“Oh, bloody hell,” Hakkai said.
The narrow path continued along a ridge-- after about a twelve-meter gap across a river-chasm. Far below them, rainforest-fed rapids thundered through a rocky canyon.
“Already takin’ care of it,” Gojyo said. He’d borrowed Nunco’s crossbow and was holding it in both hands, aiming with a string-tied arrow at some little stone protrusions on the other side of the chasm. The protrusions were eroded but it was clear they’d been purposely cut: they were centuries-old anchors for a rope bridge. The rope and wood had long ago rotted away. Gojyo lifted his aim slightly toward some vines hanging above the stone rope-holds.
“You’ll never do it,” Hakkai said.
“I’m a great shot. Very cool all around,” Gojyo boasted, and fired. And he was a fantastic shot; the arrow thunked into the rock just over the vine, then fell behind it. The vine curled around one of the rock protrusions, and a few twine-jerks by Gojyo had anchored the rope to it. It was then a simple matter to tie the rope to the rock on their own side of the chasm. Gojyo looked at Hakkai.
“Last is most dangerous position this time. I’ll take it.”
Hakkai understood: they didn’t have enough rope to leave any of it here, either, and whoever went last would have to swing over and bring it with them.
“Then I shall go first,” Hakkai volunteered.
Hand over hand and dangling from the rope, Hakkai swung across the chasm. The canyon was relatively narrow and dark, with slick vine- and slime-covered walls, but so deep below him that it felt wide, gaping, like if he fell he’d be swallowed up like an amoeba in the mouth of a hippo. Hippos were terrible, bad-tempered creatures. He avoided them whenever he was in Egypt--
“Gotcha!” Gojyo called over as the rope knotted around Hakkai’s chest tugged and took up the slack; they would catch him if he fell. And he was almost to the other side.
“I’m there!” Hakkai called back as he traversed the last few rope-grabs and gained purchase on the rock-remnants of the old Incan bridge. He climbed up and looked back across to see Gojyo giving him a thumbs-up and a wide grin.
“You’re almost as cool as I am!”
One by one the group came across until only Gojyo was left to clean things up. First he tied the anchor rope, held by Hakkai and the others, around his chest and under his armpits. Then he bent to loosen the rope hitched to the bridge-stones on his side of the chasm, preparing to swing over on both ropes.
But he had no support above him and he must have stepped onto a weak rock; the edge of the cliff crumbled under his boot and since he was bent over, he fell head-first.
“Gojyo!” Hakkai called reflexively, even though it would do no good. In the seconds he had before Gojyo fell to the limits of the rope Hakkai prepared himself to catch him, digging in his feet and gripping the rope with the men behind him as tightly as he could--
But it was worse and worse: before Gojyo could fall he became head-and-neck-tangled in a jumble of vines lining the wall and the rope he’d already untied. He hung from the knotted mass, limply, and he was going to asphyxiate if he hadn’t knocked himself out on the rocks or snapped his neck, already--
“Gojyo!”
Hakkai had always counted himself lucky that while he could be frightened, he never panicked. Still, he passed a horribly crystal-clear and terrible few seconds while he pulled his knife from his boot-sheath and tipped it over his shoulder, taking only a second to aim before flinging it in Gojyo’s direction.
In those seconds Gojyo must have awoken, because his eyes opened and then widened as he, in order, realized his predicament and spotted Hakkai’s knife flying towards him. But Hakkai was also a very good shot; the knife sliced through the ropes and vines that had caught Gojyo’s neck, and Gojyo swung forward on the anchor line in a yelling tangle of limbs, rope and vine.
“Waaaaahhh--” Thunk!
Hakkai let Nunco and his men hold the rope and he ran to the edge of the cliff to look over. Gojyo was hanging about ten meters below Hakkai, looking up at him. He was a little bloody and wide-eyed, but alive.
“We’re going to pull you up,” Hakkai told him in a very calm voice.
“Yeah-- huhhuh-- please-- huh,” Gojyo huffed.
When Gojyo was dragged to the top of the cliff, Hakkai was right there in front to grab his arms and pull him the rest of the way. Gojyo closed his eyes and sighed and didn’t climb to his feet but flopped on top of Hakkai, wheezing and shaking. And Hakkai wrapped his arms around Gojyo and thought it would be a shame if the world were to exist without Gojyo in it.
“Thank you,” Gojyo said after a minute or so, pushing himself off Hakkai and back to his knees. Hakkai sat up, breathing, letting the emotional moment dissipate. They needed to get going.
“You’re welcome,” he said in his same very calm voice.
Gojyo just stared at him with a strange expression. “Oh, God. You’re so cool. Wow.”
“Haha,” Hakkai said, and thought about standing, but couldn’t look away from Gojyo.
“Oh God,” Gojyo said again. “Please ask me to come on to you. Because I think I’m in love with you.”
“Indeed,” Hakkai said, feeling a little apprehensive again and scooting back on his heels infinitesimally.
“The way you winged that knife-- oh, yeah, here--” Gojyo broke the uncomfortably intense eye contact and reached behind him and under his jacket. He then presented Hakkai with... his knife.
“I can’t believe you caught it,” Hakkai said, nonplussed. He took it from Gojyo and examined it. It was definitely his. There was a small nick in the blade where it had caught the rock wall. Hakkai couldn’t help it: he smiled in admiration, and laughed, and wanted to laugh like he’d never laughed before, and then realized that Nunco and the other men would likely think him crazy and after that realized that he didn’t care, because maybe he was in love, too--
Gojyo rolled off his heels to sit on his rear and continued. “Well, I saved that but I lost the TycoSat.”
Gojyo’s words sunk in and Hakkai’s mirth dissipated. “You what?” he asked, just for verification.
“I lost the TycoSat,” Gojyo said sheepishly. “I didn’t seal the top of my bag before I fell, and it fell out. I watched it as it plummeted prettily towards the river. Down there.” He pointed over his shoulder, completely unnecessarily.
“That,” Hakkai said and stood, taking a deep breath. “Was very sloppy.”
“Don’t I know it--”
“We’d better get going,” Hakkai said, and began to help the men coil the rope.
***
For another day and a half or so they worked their way-- more carefully than ever-- across narrow, exposed ridges. Gojyo smiled and joked like always but his front wasn’t perfect, and Hakkai could tell he was feeling a little hurt at Hakkai’s not-quite-rejection of his not-quite-confession of love. Or maybe Hakkai had just become more sensitive to Gojyo’s moods.
Hakkai found it much easier to be professionally annoyed than to be slightly soppy, which was where he’d been headed. So he replied professionally and coolly to Gojyo’s suggestions and to Gojyo’s grins and regretted it a little, but knew that he was ultimately saving himself a world of trouble.
After yet another day they followed the sparse road-evidence markers down off the ridges into a deep, shadowed and jungle-forested valley. It wasn’t outlined on Hakkai’s area map and since they had no GPS or computers and couldn’t see the sunlight, they couldn’t verify their position. Gojyo still swore they were still headed in the right direction. It was chilly and dark, sort of like Hakkai’s continuing mood.
“The satellite system would be quite useful right about now,” Hakkai pointed out. They stood next to a low, cold, rushing stream and Hakkai was using a penlight to try and find the stream on his map. It was raining and now and then a drop made its way through the leaf-canopy to plop onto Hakkai’s map.
“Yeah,” Gojyo said. He looked down at something cupped in his palm and then up, as if trying to find the late-afternoon sun through the thick forest-covering and the clouds. They still had their compasses but the mountainous terrain and the Andes’s own gravity made those less useful than they should be.
“The stream is not drawn on the map, as I’ll assume it was an aerial map. But if we just came down this ridge, then we should be here...” Hakkai held out the map with his finger pointing to where he thought here was. Predictably, despite Hakkai’s dry snark about the lost GPS, it was right in the center of Gojyo’s red-zone, the area they’d set out to search. Gojyo’s instincts were... well, they were sickening. And awesome to behold.
“Well, to work,” Gojyo said. “Start sweeping the underbrush, looking for entrances or something, anything. A low temple that’s been covered by jungle. An entrance to an underground cavern. Something.”
“A sonar system would also be quite useful right about now,” Hakkai pointed out, still a little jealous.
“Yeah, yeah. Your British disapproval is sapping my will to live, man,” Gojyo said with a bland expression.
Hakkai was surprised at the stab of sadness he felt at that expression; he’d meant to be dry and snarky, but he hadn’t been prepared for the guilt associated with it. What had happened to I love it when you’re all British and dry at me?
Why did he care about Gojyo so much, or what Gojyo felt? He tried to tell himself that he missed the camaraderie, but just like he’d never been good at panicking, he’d never been good at fooling himself. He’d never been good at avoiding trouble, either.
“Shit-- Ouch!”
Hakkai looked over to see Gojyo examining something on the ground. Gojyo flicked on his torch and pointed it between his booted feet.
“Well, well,” he said in an interesting voice. It was an interesting enough voice that Hakkai forgot his own angst for a minute. He carefully stepped through the undergrowth in Gojyo’s direction.
“What is it?”
The wavering circle of Gojyo’s torch illuminated a grayish-tan lump that was half-buried in the dirt. Hakkai flicked on his own torch and Gojyo hunkered down to dig the lump out, carefully, with his fingers and a small pick.
“Willya look at that.”
Hakkai looked. It was a piece of decorative wall in the Incan style, about half a meter square. On it he could see an eroded, curved line with some straight bits leading from it, and a suggestion of tiny, oblong clusters...
“That looks like part of a sun-and-grain motif,” Hakkai said, waving the torch to follow the pattern in the brick. “Like in the pictures I’ve seen of Mameria. It looks broken on the edges, like it--”
“Like it fell,” Gojyo said. He stood and grinned at Hakkai, and it was his full grin, open and sunny like his half-downtrodden attitude of the last day or so had never existed. Hakkai felt an answering excitement-- because it signified a find, of course.
The climb up the opposite side of the valley was steep but productive. Up there more daylight squeezed through the leaves and they found more ruins, stones in little piles as if they’d been shaken loose by an earthquake. Something major existed, or used to exist, nearby. Hakkai itched to take digitized photos of them all and then to collate them on his contextualized software, to see them as they might have looked when they’d been erected. The light was fading but he couldn’t stop trying to find more of them; they were close, so close--
“Oi, Hakkai!” Gojyo called at one point, his voice muffled. “Come see this. It’s weird.”
Hakkai followed Gojyo’s voice through the brush and broke through into a clearing. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw it: it looked like an arch built into the hillside, like an entrance to the underworld. The ground was clear around it and the sky was clear overhead in an almost perfect circle cut into the tree-canopy, so narrow that it would only be visible from straight above. Grain-and-sun designs twisted down the sides of the stone arch and more groups of oblongs decorated its top, looking like... like... snake scales. Dragon scales. They dripped from the rain, now slackening.
“Beautiful and powerful,” Hakkai murmured. Was it a monument to Pachacamac, dragon husband to Mama Pacha? This could be the door to the home of the artifact, certainly. Except-- it didn’t seem to go anywhere except into dirt. Gojyo kicked the ground inside the arch, and it was ground like any other.
“Do we dig, señor?” Nunco asked.
“No,” Hakkai said. He was staring again at the outline of the arch, its position, its up-and-around dragon, the little markings inside his scales and the hint of water-creature and waves that surrounded him...
“No, señor?”
“Gojyo. Draw me the symbols from the Machu Picchu tablet, would you?” Powerful but alone, searching for her grainy, dragoness fertility. Ukoku was a twisted bastard but he had poetic vision. This was a story about a mating dance. The Incans’ written language was buried in their art, like so many cultures Hakkai had seen, thousands of years apart and thousands of miles away... “Gojyo. Do it now.”
“Ha-- yessir.” Hakkai heard Gojyo digging through his bag, heard the flap of paper. “Gettin’ dark. Suppose we should try and camp here.”
“If only we could get in. But this is not the door,” Hakkai said.
“Hakkai?” Gojyo had an odd tone to his voice. “How’d you know that?”
“I just--”
His explanation was cut off by a thup-thup-thup-thupping, loud and growing louder. Leaves and dirt whipped off the ground into a cyclone of detritus. They were so close to finding... Hakkai was so close to reading the words that weren’t there... why hadn’t he had Gojyo draw the key earlier?
“Shit! They’re shooting! Get the hell out of here, you guys,” Gojyo yelled as gunshots rang through the forest and pinged off the rocks, the gorgeous stone art that Hakkai was trying to read, thank you very much--
Gojyo grabbed his arm and yanked and ran and perforce Hakkai ran, too, stumbling through the underbrush. Nunco and his fellow countrymen scattered.
“Stop shooting, idiots!” a voice blared in Spanish, an oily voice that Hakkai recognized even over a loudspeaker. Hakkai risked a look over his shoulder and saw a helicopter hovering above the steep hill, Ukoku hanging out one half of the cockpit. It couldn’t possibly land; they’d have to have been desperate, and perhaps crazy, to bring it down through that narrow opening in the trees. “Climb down, grab the gringos, don’t kill them or you get nothing. Hey, Gojyo! Thanks for leading us here, though I almost lost you when your beacon took a dive into a gorge. Lookie lookie, there’s a whole mess of caverns under here--”
“Asshole!” Gojyo stopped running and reached into his jacket pocket to yank out his pistol. As fast and accurate with bullets as he was with arrows, Gojyo fired off two shots: one shattered a device in Ukoku’s hand, and the other glanced off the helicopter’s windshield but didn’t break it. Whoever had been shooting at them before started up again.
“Stop shooting, you morons--” Ukoku shouted.
“Shit,” Gojyo said, and took off again. Hakkai followed, almost laughing with the danger and the adrenaline and the excitement of their find. Suddenly Gojyo twisted and grabbed the front of Hakkai’s shirt and pulled and fell, and Hakkai went down after him.
Thump! Thump-crack!
Silence.
END PART 1
The Lost City of Paititi, Part Two
Author:
jedishampooRating: NC-l7
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
Summary: When jungle explorers Gojyo Shawn and Hakkai Childs meet, it’s the beginning of a beautiful partnership.
Warnings: Mention of past incest (canon, yo); language; cliffhangers
Author's notes: Written for my dearest
kansouame in the 7thnight_smut exchange. She wanted an archaeology adventure/romance in the jungle with cliffhangers. Dear readers, if you know anything about real archaeology or Incan civilization, please ignore such knowledge when reading this story. Mwah to my lovely beta sharpeslass, and to lauand, who very kindly provided assistance with the Spanish; any remaining errors are my own. Loads of love and thanks to rroselavy for her work as the Merciful Goddess in organizing this exchange. Click To Read The Lost City of Paititi, Part 1
Hakkai put his left foot in front of his right, then paused and breathed. He took another step, right in front of left, and then paused again while his Machiguenga guide slashed his machete, carving into the jungle before them. He breathed again, deeply in the thin air of the high-altitude rainforest where everything was slippery and slimy and hot then cold: step, pause, breathe, step, pause, step-slash-breathe.
Never would he have thought he’d miss the dry air of Egypt quite so very much, or the chilly, far-from-equatorial dampness of home. He’d not trained well for Peru but who’d have known that Genjo would have sustained that injury or that the Club would want someone in South America quite so desperately? But they’d received word of clues to the lost Incan city of Paititi and begged Hakkai to go to Peru as their representative. He’d merely been a replacement for Genjo but he did know the languages and, after all, there were petroglyphs to be deciphered and a golden phallus to be located. A legendary golden phallus, to be exact.
Step-slash-breathe. When his group reached a small clearing Hakkai was so numbly grateful to sit for a moment on a rock in the sun, drying himself like a lizard, that, at first, his brain didn’t register the commotion. He turned and his dulled senses were assailed by a cacophony of gunfire and shouting, a blaze of fire and sunlight on metal. Something slammed into his skull from behind, sharp and hot and painful, machete or club it didn’t matter because his glasses flew off and before he fell he saw, in the midst of it all like calm in the chaos, a pair of binoculars with black hair above and a sly grin below...
***
“Oi! You alive?”
...Hakkai didn’t know where he was or why it was so hot and noisy or why the unfamiliar voice was yammering at him in Spanish. He only knew that his head hurt terribly, so much so that he didn’t want to open his eyes. In fact, he did not particularly even want to be alive.
“Nnnn,” he moaned, hoping the voice would take the hint and go away and let him die.
“He lives! Haha. Will you get that water for me, baby?” the voice said, a deep, drawly sort of voice speaking Spanish with an American accent, the sort of voice that might have been soothing in circumstances where Hakkai’s head did not feel like it was being scraped open with an adze.
“Nnngoawaynnn...” he said, hoping a stronger hint might be more successful in communicating his desire to die alone.
“Hey! And you speak English. Awesome,” the voice said, in English. “Wakey, wakey! I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Damn you to hell,” Hakkai whispered. His arm hurt but he lifted it to his forehead, to shield his eyes from the glare he knew was waiting for him ere he opened them. It still hurt when he did open them. His missing glasses and the pain of his headache blurred his vision, but he could make out a man with a tanned face peering at him from under a pile of shockingly red hair. The man, who was sitting next to Hakkai’s bed or pallet or whatever he was laid out upon, turned to look up at a brightly dressed girl. He took something from her.
“Thanks, María-- hey, you boiled this, right, babe?” the man said to the girl in Spanish. At her Sí, señor Joe he thanked her and turned back to Hakkai. “Water. I’ve got aspirin, too. Here. Oh, man, what pretty eyes you’ve got!”
“Nnnnthankgod,” Hakkai said.
“Oi! Don’t sit up. Just raise your head a little.” El señor Joe shoved something between Hakkai’s lips with two fingers clean fingernails I think and then tilted a cup of water boiled he’d said into Hakkai’s mouth. Hakkai swallowed and swallowed some more and closed his eyes for a second or two...
...When he opened them again, he was alone and the light in the room had changed. Blessedly, his headache was almost gone; the painkillers had helped. He sat up. He appeared to be in a blurry sort of hovel. Further examination revealed his glasses sitting, unbroken, on a scarred, rickety table next to his pallet. Hakkai put them on.
Hovel. Oh, yes. Peru. Paititi, Lost Golden City of the Inca. Golden phalluses. El señor Joe, however, was not part of Hakkai’s long-term memory. Who was he? And had he left in the time that Hakkai had fallen back asleep?
“Hello?” Hakkai called out.
“Hey! You’re awake again, man. You probably shouldn’ta slept with that head injury, but it’s too late to worry about it now.”
There was a rustling and el señor Joe hovered in the doorway, one hand holding the dirty canvas door-flap open against the doorjamb and the other perched on his hip. He was wearing well-cut khaki trousers and a khaki shirt. It looked like he was posing for a glamour shot of “tall, handsome, American explorer.”
His startling red hair was his most striking feature but his face was slenderly pretty-- not usually a word Hakkai might use in reference to a man, but it was a good word for el señor Joe. He had only two tiny scars on his left cheek to keep him from being overwhelmingly good-looking.
“Where am I, please?” Hakkai asked.
“Hey-ey, and you’re British. You’re in Pantiacolla. Peru. I hope you were expecting that part of it, anyway. María here’s brother--” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder-- “found you yesterday, on the trail to Mameria, bleeding. They called me ‘cause they figured I’d know the gringo. So. Do you remember how you got all beaten up?”
“You are... who?” Hakkai asked, slowly.
“Oh, right. Gojyo Shawn.” Gojyo stuck out his tanned hand with its clean fingernails. Hakkai clasped it, still somewhat weakly.
The somewhat infamous Gojyo Shawn. “I’ve heard of you,” Hakkai said, neutrally, and released Gojyo’s hand. “You used to work for UCLA. You’d been pursued to join the Club at one time. And I’ve heard other things.”
“Heh. I hate clubs. And UCLA didn’t believe in-- well. That’s me. Who are you, my pretty-green-eyed gringo?”
Was the somewhat infamous Gojyo Shawn flirting with him? Reportedly he was a bit of a rogue in the world of exploring archaeologists, with a few other rumors surrounding him. No, thank you, Hakkai thought. “Childs. Hakkai Childs.”
Gojyo’s red eyebrows rose. “Oh. I’ve heard of you, too. Good work at Ixtolna. You’re a languages expert. You’re looking for Paititi, too, aren’t you?”
Paititi, the lost city of gold, hidden before the conquistadores had come. Hakkai had been attacked. This man, the infamous Gojyo Shawn, was Hakkai’s rival. Hakkai needed to proceed cautiously. “What makes you say that?”
“No need to get all snooty on me. ‘S the only lost city in these parts that the world’s got a lead on right now,” Gojyo laughed. “Plus, I heard the Explorer’s Club was heading here. Where’s your team, anyway? Don’t tell me you came alone? Lost your funding?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know where they are, but if you’ll please lend me a cellular or satellite phone, I’ll find out. Then I’ll be out of your hair. I thank you for your assistance.”
Gojyo’s brown eyes narrowed. “What the hell? Why the snippy attitude all of a sudden?”
Hakkai sniffed and gave Gojyo a pitying look. “Would you trust you? I’m alone, and don’t wish to divulge my reasons for being in Peru. And I’d heard you were arrested for looting. More than once. Apparently you don’t know how to follow the proper matrices.”
“Yeah?” Gojyo shoved a cigarette between his lips and stared at Hakkai as if daring him to say something about it. He lit the cigarette and pfted smoke out of his grinning mouth around it. “Well, I’ve heard things about you, too. Heard you dated your sister. A fellow member of your Explorer’s Club.”
“What?” Hakkai’s jaw dropped in his shock. What sort of clod would bring up such a thing? “That was... none of your business.”
“Small world we work in, eh? So, again. Where’s your team? Listen. If I’da wanted to kill you, I woulda done it, already.”
Hakkai took a deep breath. What Gojyo had said was true. Furthermore, he and the locals had assisted Hakkai when he’d been at his most vulnerable. He needed an ally, even a disgustingly saucy one. “I came with a Club expedition. I think... we were attacked.”
Gojyo gave his cigarette a satisfied puff. “Ah. Well, jungle’s a dangerous place. But you survived. I’m looking for Paititi, lost city of riches. And I’m gonna find it, ‘cause I have the magic key. I could use a language-man, though. Wanna join me? Get one back on whoever attacked ya?”
“No, thank you. But I would still like to make a phone call.”
Gojyo scowled at him again. “Well, go ahead, but by the time you’ve got another team it’ll be too late. ‘Cause I’ll have found Paititi, already.”
“Found it and looted it?”
“Hah! Just you and the Explorer’s Club wait. I’ve already got the--”
Whatever boast Gojyo was going to make was drowned out by a loud thup-thupping noise that came from outside. There were shouts, in Spanish and Quechua, by the door.
Hakkai felt along his trouser-legs and into his boots. Not there. He looked at the wide-eyed Gojyo.
“I had a knife. A rather large one--”
“You mean the sword?” Gojyo bent down and reached for something outside the door. When he straightened he was holding Hakkai’s-- admittedly large-- dagger.
Hakkai swung his legs out of bed and jumped to his feet. Adrenaline combated his momentary dizziness and he was able to grab the knife before Gojyo could stop him. His glare backed Gojyo out the door.
“Don’t kill me, man. I ain’t judging you for sleepin’ with your sister. I’ve done some kinky shit in my day...”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Hakkai said, and ducked under the door-flap.
***
Outside, the dust of Pantiacolla had been kicked up into the hot, humid air to make a sticky sort of dirt-plaster. The wind was being whipped by the blades of a big, military-style helicopter that hovered over the town center. What looked like the entire population of the town had turned out to join Hakkai and Gojyo, and they all, thirty or so of them, stood in a prayer-circle of shielded eyes to watch it land.
The helicopter touched down and the blades slowed to a more casual fwip-fwip that let the dust settle a little. A handsome, black-haired man in crisp black fatigues stepped out of the helicopter. He grinned at the gathered people in general then looked directly at Hakkai and Gojyo--
-- binoculars, black hair and white teeth--
Hakkai tightened his grip on the handle of his knife. This man was responsible for whatever had befallen him earlier, he was sure of it--
“Ukoku,” Gojyo drawled at the man’s grin. Gojyo’s hand rested in an odd position at his hip, and Hakkai realized that Gojyo had a weapon concealed there. “You asshole. Thought you’d given up and gone to Venezuela this year.”
“God, you’re cute,” Ukoku of the black hair and black suit said, smiling. He pulled off his sunglasses and looked pityingly at Hakkai. “Childs, right? I’ve seen your picture in the Club directory. Ukoku Santiago. I’m pleased to meet you. I heard about the attack on your team and came to offer my assistance.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” Hakkai said. He’d heard of Santiago. He was the showy sort of explorer who had a private fortune and didn’t need to rely on grants, who showed up and claimed large, important finds while other, better explorers were begging for funding. Hakkai had never heard that he was dangerous, but in person he looked slick and treacherous and smarmy and Hakkai hated him on the spot.
Ukoku continued. “Many of your men were found dead near Mameria. I was sorry when I heard that. I can offer you a place on my team, however. I could use a languages expert of your skill and reputation.”
Hakkai hadn’t known about his men for sure. He trusted Ukoku less than ever. “I--”
“Oh, g’wan, get the fuck out of here, Ukoku,” Gojyo interrupted. Hakkai glanced over and was surprised to see Gojyo grinning and gesturing with his cigarette. “Get back in your ‘copter and fly around some more-- all you’ll see’s jungle. What I have, you can’t buy with your money.”
“You’re giving me a hard-on by being so goddamned sexy,” Ukoku drawled as he glanced back at Gojyo. “I don’t need to buy anything, and I know you don’t have the Golden Phallus yet.”
“Not gonna be your ultimate sex toy,” Gojyo said. Hakkai thought privately that the Peruvian jungle was certainly queer this time of year.
Ukoku spread his arms into a wide and dramatic pose. “The ultimate key. Our Incan goddess Mama Pacha will lead me to it with her petroglyph porn and her grainy, dragoness fertility, and I’ll squeeze that golden dick into her breadbasket in Mameria, just like her chthonic husband-god Mr. Pachacamac, and Paititi will open to me like Mama Pacha’s flower-strewn vagina. Especially once Mr. Childs joins my team and has a look at some of the fascinating glyphs I’ve photographed.”
He looked smugly at Hakkai, who hated him more than ever, mostly for his smarminess and not for his pornographic interpretation of Incan legend. There was something else, too... “I’m quite sorry,” Hakkai said with a small bow. “I’ve already made arrangements to work with Mr. Shawn, and, after all his help, it would be rude to go back on my word.”
To Gojyo’s credit he didn’t betray his surprise. “Yeah, Ukoku. See ya in Mama Pacha’s open flowery womb. I’ll save ya some sloppy seconds.”
Ukoku merely smiled, small and tight. “Very well. I’ll see you on the Inca Road, gentlemen. If you change your minds, I know you’ve got my number, Gojyo.” Ukoku winked and then whipped around on one heel and slid back into the helicopter through a door held open by two black-suited Peruvians. The vehicle was just as noisy and dusty-messy taking off as it had been landing.
“I’ll be ready to leave in a couple of days,” Gojyo said as he turned to grin at Hakkai. “You won’t regret joining me, gorgeous. I get results.”
“Perhaps I can teach you some archaeological manners.”
“You can try.”
They returned to the hut María shared with her brother and told them muchas gracias for their help and Gojyo slipped them some nuevos soles from his pocket. They gathered the rest of the items they’d found on Hakkai-- not much outside of his bag-- and Gojyo led Hakkai to the camp he shared with his native guide team.
“I’d like to find out what you have,” Hakkai admitted, once they were in safer territory. “I think Ukoku, or his men, were the ones who attacked me. Can your people fight him?”
Gojyo’s smile grew wider. “Not a concern. Ukoku won’t attack me. I have something he needs-- the magic key-- right here.” Gojyo pointed at his head. “I wasn’t kidding when I said he couldn’t buy what I had.”
Gojyo told Hakkai some things he already knew: the legend of how the Golden Phallus of Pachacamac had been lost centuries ago and was supposedly hidden somewhere at the end of the Inca Road. How the Incan town of Mameria had been discovered by the French in the 1970s, and how Mameria had supposedly been a significant farming community of the lost golden Incan city of Paititi. One legend said that, in Mameria, were instructions on how to use the Golden Phallus of Pachacamac to open a hidden door in the Mamerian temple, and that behind the hidden door was the secret to finding Paititi. Stone-writing had indeed been discovered a year or so ago in a temple room of Mameria, but it was writing that could not be deciphered. The Incans had created no system of writing of their own, so the existence of the petroglyphs was a mystery in and of itself.
Until now. Gojyo then told Hakkai something he didn’t know: one of Gojyo’s girlfriends was a professor at the University of Lima, and she’d discovered the “Rosetta Stone of the Incas” near Machu Picchu, city of the gods; it was a silver tablet, supposedly created by Incan clerics, that could interpret the petroglyphs at the Mameria site. And that professor had shown Gojyo the Machu Picchu tablet and her personal analysis of how it could be used for translation.
Professor Yané had not gone on the expedition herself because she was not an explorer, but a digger and cataloguer. She’d asked Gojyo to find Paititi first, and then she would acquire funding and plan expeditions to excavate the city. Furthermore, she’d not sold the information elsewhere or told any of her colleagues at the university. Or so Gojyo claimed. Gojyo didn’t even have a copy of the tablet or Yané’s analysis, only a photographic memory. Or so he claimed.
Ukoku had learned, somehow, that Gojyo had secret and valuable information. Gojyo said he’d already refused Ukoku, both as a lover and as an archaeological partner. Or so he claimed.
Hakkai, when it was his turn to talk, revealed very little, though admittedly he’d started out on this expedition with much less information than Gojyo. The Explorer’s Club had sent Hakkai with a wish for him to attempt to read the Mameria petroglyphs, not from the few, grainy photos but in their native habitat-- Hakkai’s specialty was archaeo-geologic context. Genjo had shared that specialty. Hakkai wondered if one of the responsible members at the Club had known more about recent discoveries than they’d let on.
He was saddened by the deaths of his team-mates, and annoyed by the prospect of traveling with Gojyo. But privately he was feeling a little excited. It had become apparent to him that they stood a very good chance of getting very close to Paititi. What a find-- an unsacked Incan city! And there were petroglyphs that only he-- and perhaps the absent Genjo-- could fully interpret.
For a moment Hakkai pictured Gojyo flirting with Genjo, were Genjo here as originally intended. The thought should have amused him greatly-- Genjo was extremely handsome but not a man to suffer lightheartedness or foolishness of any kind, and his put-downs were legendary. Instead the thought made Hakkai feel rather irritated.
Hakkai banished his own momentary discomfort with a small, secret, extra excitement at the thought of getting revenge on Ukoku Santiago.
***
By the time they’d been on the road a day or so, however, Hakkai was severely regretting his choice.
For one thing, the travel was as difficult as ever. They were on the Inca Road, heading in the opposite direction from where Hakkai had originally planned to go-- why visit Mameria before they had the Golden Phallus? as Gojyo had pointed out-- but it was as humid and hot and cold and slimy as before. The jungle was impenetrable by wheeled vehicles and the high altitude and thick, green-leafed canopy made helicopter travel dangerous, so the area still had to be explored by foot. Knowing that didn’t make it any less horrible.
And for another thing, Hakkai found himself becoming increasingly annoyed by Gojyo. The man, like a native, didn’t seem to feel the discomfort of their travel. The high altitude gave him no headaches and he seemed perfectly happy no matter the temperature. When Hakkai was removing layers because he was frying or bundling up on cold ridges, Gojyo simply wore a light jacket and whistled and walked as if he didn’t feel a thing.
And Gojyo flirted with him. Twice, already, he’d tried to coax Hakkai into stripping naked and joining him in clear mountain streams after stripping naked himself, lean and laughing and pshawing at Hakkai’s annoyance and making the guides snicker with his antics.
“Don’t worry, ‘Kai. I think you’re totally hot but I won’t put the moves on ya unless you ask me,” he’d said, brown eyes gleaming under his wet hair.
“My name is not ‘Kai,” Hakkai had told him.
Gojyo was generally disgraceful, doing that and trying to convince Hakkai to share some of the potent local wine as they sat around their campfire. Each night, instead of resting for the next day, Gojyo and the men would drink and laugh and make bawdy jokes about Englishmen and American women. Hakkai tried to ignore them, but it seemed the Peruvians had a never-ending supply of liquor.
And Gojyo seemed sloppy. He didn’t photograph or compare to sat-photo any of the Inca Road landmarks they passed, just hand-swept ivy or snakes off the stone stelae, glanced at them, and said “yep, we’re going the right way.” Hakkai had been unable to clean up Gojyo’s methods, and Gojyo’s men followed his orders first and Hakkai’s second.
“No use relying on computers out here,” Gojyo told him one evening around the campfire. “It’s not the environment for ‘em. The only electronic doodad I want out here is my GPS beacon. Greatest invention ever.” Gojyo patted the TycoSat beacon he kept in his hip-bag.
“One of them, at least,” Hakkai agreed. He took a sip from his tin cup of wine. He’d given in to Gojyo’s entreaties to have a tipple, wondering if it might not dull his altitude headache, since the natives swore it wouldn’t give him one. It tasted pretty good, at least once his tongue un-numbed itself after every sip.
“The greatest.” Gojyo was slurring.
“I do like to use sonar. Especially to find underground caverns,” Hakkai pointed out.
“Yeah, but you gotta have a laptop to run it,” Gojyo said.
“Well, you should have a laptop, anyway, to catalog everything and for reference.”
“Told ya, I have a photographic memory. I had hippie parents but I was still top of my class at UCLA. When you think you might need it, ask me and I’ll draw you a picture of the Machu Picchu tablet.”
“Ah.”
So Gojyo was not stupid, perhaps, but Hakkai would still wish a little more order on him. Hakkai wanted order and he wanted professionalism. As a scientific field, archaeology had seemed perfect. He’d had some wild travels in his youth but then there’d been that whole ordeal with Kanan and finding out-- well, order and professionalism kept him happy and he had a good reputation and success with funding and with expeditions.
Until this trip. It felt like a boys’ adventure novel.
Another reason you chose archaeology, Hakkai’s brain reminded him. Hakkai took another sip of booze to quiet his brain. Gojyo was not quiet, was chanting something into the fire.
“Mameria. Mah-meeee-ria. Ma-meeeria.” The moonlight and the light from the flames made Gojyo’s hair seem even brighter at night than it did during the day. Hakkai wondered where such a hair-color had come from; he’d gone to school in Scotland but he’d never seen hair like that. It was natural, at least it seemed so, based on Gojyo’s nude swims. Yes, Hakkai had looked, but how could he not have? Gojyo may have been a bit of a mess but he was certainly worth looking at.
“It’s pronounced ‘Mah-meh-ria,’” Hakkai told him, looking away and out into the moonlit jungle. It was cool and clammy at night and he was glad for the fire, for warmth. The native men tossed cubes of a local resin into the fire and the resulting smoke both smelled good, like sandalwood, and kept the mosquitoes away. Not to mention the jaguars. “Mah-meh. You do speak Spanish.”
“I know. I just like saying it.” Gojyo took a deep draught from his cup of booze. “Mameeeria. It sounds like something. Boobs. What’d Ukoku call it? The breadbasket? Mama Pacha was the planting and fertility goddess. She’ll like having her golden dick back.”
Hakkai rolled his eyes. In addition to his other vices, Gojyo was too...sexually overt. The problem wasn’t that he made it clear that he liked both men and women; Hakkai had been experimental in his own youth. The problem was that Gojyo never turned his overt sexual charm off. Even as a very young man Hakkai had quickly realized that sex only led to trouble. Big trouble, in some cases.
Gojyo seemed to be reading his mind. “Can ya tell me about what really happened with your sister, man?”
Hakkai rolled his eyes again. He was, surprisingly, not angry at Gojyo’s nosiness; it was just one of those things that one didn’t discuss, even in impolite society. “Are you being prurient? I told you: it’s none of your business.”
“Just askin’,” Gojyo grinned, unabashed. “Told you I’d been kinky myself.”
“It wasn’t kinky!” Hakkai retorted before he could stop himself. The booze was loosening his tongue. He set his cup aside; one of the guides grabbed it quickly and finished it for him. Still, he’d already said too much. He might as well finish the conversation for good. “We’d been adopted separately. It was a misunderstanding. There were no offspring and it’s over and-- well, it’s still none of your business.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, ah.”
Gojyo grinned, his smile too real and his teeth brighter than the moon in the dark, prettier than his hair. “I’m glad to know things. It makes me feel more comfortable working with ya, to know ya. Wanna know anything about me? Ask away!”
Why did you choose a scientific field when you’re so clearly not suited for it? How did you get your scars? Where in your hippie ancestry did you get that amazing hair-color?
Sloppy and sexually overt. Order and professionalism.
“No, thank you,” Hakkai said.
They just had nothing in common.
***
Step-pause-breathe. Step-pause-breathe-wince-oww!
The natives had absolutely lied, and when Hakkai finally found the Golden Phallus and found Paititi and didn’t need their guides anymore, he would kill them all. With his bare hands. Because the local liquor had, indeed, given him a hangover worse than his previous altitude-headache. And to top it off, Gojyo was trying to get them killed.
The TycoSat receiver had told them they were within a few kilometers of the area they’d agreed upon as their first search-zone and the probable location of the Golden Phallus. Hakkai looked right at the relatively flat path heading east to sloping Mount Catinti, which was near their destination. Then he looked to the left at the narrow, treacherous path up a mountain and across rocky ridges, the one that Gojyo claimed was the actual Inca Road.
“The Inca used to go up this running. Or with llamas,” Gojyo pointed out as he pointed up the mountain. “It’s part of the road we need to follow. C’mon-- it’s perfectly safe.”
“It wasn’t safe hundreds of years ago, and it’s certainly not safe now that centuries of erosion have had their chance to work on it. We can reach Mount Catinti via this flatter path, and then, hopefully, backtrack just a few hundred meters.” Hakkai glanced up from his folded-out map to look at Nunco, their lead guide. “Can we backtrack to the Inca Road from Mount Catinti?” he asked in Spanish.
“I don’t know,” Nunco shrugged.
“See? He doesn’t know,” Gojyo pointed out. “I do, though. I got good instincts for these things.”
“El señor Joe has very good instincts,” the normally-taciturn Nunco confirmed.
It was true, Hakkai had learned. He’d been impressed already by Gojyo’s choice of narrowed-search zone, his choice of team, and other things he’d done on instinct. But Hakkai had also decided that Gojyo was often suicidally reckless. Why else would he bathe naked in possibly-piranha-infested mountain streams in Amazonia? Hakkai liked bathing with his nice, shallow, collapsible bucket. Why would Gojyo travel without most necessary electronics? Hakkai terribly missed his laptop and cellular phone, both lost when he’d been attacked.
And why did Gojyo have to choose this path? Hakkai preferred safer roads. He’d climbed mountains before, but always in very dry climates, climates sans slime. And never with headaches this bad.
Hakkai looked at Nunco. “Would you actually follow this path he’s chosen?”
“Sí.”
“Dammit,” Hakkai muttered. He folded and stowed his map and pulled out his sturdiest ropes. “We’re doing it very slowly, then.”
“Of course,” Gojyo said. Hakkai made the mistake of glancing at him. Gojyo was smiling so widely and standing just so with his boot propped on a rock and leaning toward Hakkai on his knee and looking so incredibly sexy that Hakkai had to look away quickly. He looked back up at the mountain to sober his thoughts.
The first stretch of the path was an ascent that hugged the mountain in a spiral, centimeters wide like it’d been cut into the rock with a very small chisel by a very patient and very slender person. The Inca had been excellent road-builders; Hakkai could not believe that this was part of the Inca Road. None of the archaeological treatises or reports he’d read on Peruvian expeditions had mentioned such a location.
But then, none of the previous explorers had found the Golden Phallus, either. Or even the end of the Inca Road. Just jungle, and sometimes death.
They went up single file. Gojyo had chosen the front position and no one had argued him for it. They all clung to one length of rope, lightly in case one slipped step caused a man-avalanche down the mountain.
Every ten steps or so Hakkai could hear a chink and a thunk as Gojyo or someone up above him drove a metal spike into the wall or, somewhere below him, pulled the lowest spike out. If the men had carried a little less liquor then they might have managed more mountain-climbing supplies, Hakkai thought uncharitably. They might have to come back this way, eventually, and pre-planted rope-spikes would make the dangerous descent a little more safe.
Step-chink-thunk-winceow, step-chink-thunk-throb--
“Haha ha!” That last had been Gojyo, somewhere above him. “Oi, Hakkai!”
“Yes?”
“There’s a stela in the wall, about fifteen meters above you. Look it over when you go past. Ha! I knew this was the right path.”
Hakkai sighed and resisted the urge to growl in frustration. “How exciting it must be for you to be always right,” he called up.
“I love it when you’re all British and dry at me.” Gojyo sounded fond and happy, and for a few minutes Hakkai felt happy, too, as he imagined Gojyo’s smile. He nearly forgot the peril of his situation. He even chuckled when he passed the stone shield-idol set into the wall, its design only lightly eroded. It showed a stylized picture of a man on a vertical path. Incan for Beware Steep Road?
A few minutes later, Gojyo must have reached the top. “Whew,” he called down. Then, “Holy shit!”
A few minutes after that, Hakkai crested the top as well. They stood on a little flat plateau next to--
“Oh, bloody hell,” Hakkai said.
The narrow path continued along a ridge-- after about a twelve-meter gap across a river-chasm. Far below them, rainforest-fed rapids thundered through a rocky canyon.
“Already takin’ care of it,” Gojyo said. He’d borrowed Nunco’s crossbow and was holding it in both hands, aiming with a string-tied arrow at some little stone protrusions on the other side of the chasm. The protrusions were eroded but it was clear they’d been purposely cut: they were centuries-old anchors for a rope bridge. The rope and wood had long ago rotted away. Gojyo lifted his aim slightly toward some vines hanging above the stone rope-holds.
“You’ll never do it,” Hakkai said.
“I’m a great shot. Very cool all around,” Gojyo boasted, and fired. And he was a fantastic shot; the arrow thunked into the rock just over the vine, then fell behind it. The vine curled around one of the rock protrusions, and a few twine-jerks by Gojyo had anchored the rope to it. It was then a simple matter to tie the rope to the rock on their own side of the chasm. Gojyo looked at Hakkai.
“Last is most dangerous position this time. I’ll take it.”
Hakkai understood: they didn’t have enough rope to leave any of it here, either, and whoever went last would have to swing over and bring it with them.
“Then I shall go first,” Hakkai volunteered.
Hand over hand and dangling from the rope, Hakkai swung across the chasm. The canyon was relatively narrow and dark, with slick vine- and slime-covered walls, but so deep below him that it felt wide, gaping, like if he fell he’d be swallowed up like an amoeba in the mouth of a hippo. Hippos were terrible, bad-tempered creatures. He avoided them whenever he was in Egypt--
“Gotcha!” Gojyo called over as the rope knotted around Hakkai’s chest tugged and took up the slack; they would catch him if he fell. And he was almost to the other side.
“I’m there!” Hakkai called back as he traversed the last few rope-grabs and gained purchase on the rock-remnants of the old Incan bridge. He climbed up and looked back across to see Gojyo giving him a thumbs-up and a wide grin.
“You’re almost as cool as I am!”
One by one the group came across until only Gojyo was left to clean things up. First he tied the anchor rope, held by Hakkai and the others, around his chest and under his armpits. Then he bent to loosen the rope hitched to the bridge-stones on his side of the chasm, preparing to swing over on both ropes.
But he had no support above him and he must have stepped onto a weak rock; the edge of the cliff crumbled under his boot and since he was bent over, he fell head-first.
“Gojyo!” Hakkai called reflexively, even though it would do no good. In the seconds he had before Gojyo fell to the limits of the rope Hakkai prepared himself to catch him, digging in his feet and gripping the rope with the men behind him as tightly as he could--
But it was worse and worse: before Gojyo could fall he became head-and-neck-tangled in a jumble of vines lining the wall and the rope he’d already untied. He hung from the knotted mass, limply, and he was going to asphyxiate if he hadn’t knocked himself out on the rocks or snapped his neck, already--
“Gojyo!”
Hakkai had always counted himself lucky that while he could be frightened, he never panicked. Still, he passed a horribly crystal-clear and terrible few seconds while he pulled his knife from his boot-sheath and tipped it over his shoulder, taking only a second to aim before flinging it in Gojyo’s direction.
In those seconds Gojyo must have awoken, because his eyes opened and then widened as he, in order, realized his predicament and spotted Hakkai’s knife flying towards him. But Hakkai was also a very good shot; the knife sliced through the ropes and vines that had caught Gojyo’s neck, and Gojyo swung forward on the anchor line in a yelling tangle of limbs, rope and vine.
“Waaaaahhh--” Thunk!
Hakkai let Nunco and his men hold the rope and he ran to the edge of the cliff to look over. Gojyo was hanging about ten meters below Hakkai, looking up at him. He was a little bloody and wide-eyed, but alive.
“We’re going to pull you up,” Hakkai told him in a very calm voice.
“Yeah-- huhhuh-- please-- huh,” Gojyo huffed.
When Gojyo was dragged to the top of the cliff, Hakkai was right there in front to grab his arms and pull him the rest of the way. Gojyo closed his eyes and sighed and didn’t climb to his feet but flopped on top of Hakkai, wheezing and shaking. And Hakkai wrapped his arms around Gojyo and thought it would be a shame if the world were to exist without Gojyo in it.
“Thank you,” Gojyo said after a minute or so, pushing himself off Hakkai and back to his knees. Hakkai sat up, breathing, letting the emotional moment dissipate. They needed to get going.
“You’re welcome,” he said in his same very calm voice.
Gojyo just stared at him with a strange expression. “Oh, God. You’re so cool. Wow.”
“Haha,” Hakkai said, and thought about standing, but couldn’t look away from Gojyo.
“Oh God,” Gojyo said again. “Please ask me to come on to you. Because I think I’m in love with you.”
“Indeed,” Hakkai said, feeling a little apprehensive again and scooting back on his heels infinitesimally.
“The way you winged that knife-- oh, yeah, here--” Gojyo broke the uncomfortably intense eye contact and reached behind him and under his jacket. He then presented Hakkai with... his knife.
“I can’t believe you caught it,” Hakkai said, nonplussed. He took it from Gojyo and examined it. It was definitely his. There was a small nick in the blade where it had caught the rock wall. Hakkai couldn’t help it: he smiled in admiration, and laughed, and wanted to laugh like he’d never laughed before, and then realized that Nunco and the other men would likely think him crazy and after that realized that he didn’t care, because maybe he was in love, too--
Gojyo rolled off his heels to sit on his rear and continued. “Well, I saved that but I lost the TycoSat.”
Gojyo’s words sunk in and Hakkai’s mirth dissipated. “You what?” he asked, just for verification.
“I lost the TycoSat,” Gojyo said sheepishly. “I didn’t seal the top of my bag before I fell, and it fell out. I watched it as it plummeted prettily towards the river. Down there.” He pointed over his shoulder, completely unnecessarily.
“That,” Hakkai said and stood, taking a deep breath. “Was very sloppy.”
“Don’t I know it--”
“We’d better get going,” Hakkai said, and began to help the men coil the rope.
***
For another day and a half or so they worked their way-- more carefully than ever-- across narrow, exposed ridges. Gojyo smiled and joked like always but his front wasn’t perfect, and Hakkai could tell he was feeling a little hurt at Hakkai’s not-quite-rejection of his not-quite-confession of love. Or maybe Hakkai had just become more sensitive to Gojyo’s moods.
Hakkai found it much easier to be professionally annoyed than to be slightly soppy, which was where he’d been headed. So he replied professionally and coolly to Gojyo’s suggestions and to Gojyo’s grins and regretted it a little, but knew that he was ultimately saving himself a world of trouble.
After yet another day they followed the sparse road-evidence markers down off the ridges into a deep, shadowed and jungle-forested valley. It wasn’t outlined on Hakkai’s area map and since they had no GPS or computers and couldn’t see the sunlight, they couldn’t verify their position. Gojyo still swore they were still headed in the right direction. It was chilly and dark, sort of like Hakkai’s continuing mood.
“The satellite system would be quite useful right about now,” Hakkai pointed out. They stood next to a low, cold, rushing stream and Hakkai was using a penlight to try and find the stream on his map. It was raining and now and then a drop made its way through the leaf-canopy to plop onto Hakkai’s map.
“Yeah,” Gojyo said. He looked down at something cupped in his palm and then up, as if trying to find the late-afternoon sun through the thick forest-covering and the clouds. They still had their compasses but the mountainous terrain and the Andes’s own gravity made those less useful than they should be.
“The stream is not drawn on the map, as I’ll assume it was an aerial map. But if we just came down this ridge, then we should be here...” Hakkai held out the map with his finger pointing to where he thought here was. Predictably, despite Hakkai’s dry snark about the lost GPS, it was right in the center of Gojyo’s red-zone, the area they’d set out to search. Gojyo’s instincts were... well, they were sickening. And awesome to behold.
“Well, to work,” Gojyo said. “Start sweeping the underbrush, looking for entrances or something, anything. A low temple that’s been covered by jungle. An entrance to an underground cavern. Something.”
“A sonar system would also be quite useful right about now,” Hakkai pointed out, still a little jealous.
“Yeah, yeah. Your British disapproval is sapping my will to live, man,” Gojyo said with a bland expression.
Hakkai was surprised at the stab of sadness he felt at that expression; he’d meant to be dry and snarky, but he hadn’t been prepared for the guilt associated with it. What had happened to I love it when you’re all British and dry at me?
Why did he care about Gojyo so much, or what Gojyo felt? He tried to tell himself that he missed the camaraderie, but just like he’d never been good at panicking, he’d never been good at fooling himself. He’d never been good at avoiding trouble, either.
“Shit-- Ouch!”
Hakkai looked over to see Gojyo examining something on the ground. Gojyo flicked on his torch and pointed it between his booted feet.
“Well, well,” he said in an interesting voice. It was an interesting enough voice that Hakkai forgot his own angst for a minute. He carefully stepped through the undergrowth in Gojyo’s direction.
“What is it?”
The wavering circle of Gojyo’s torch illuminated a grayish-tan lump that was half-buried in the dirt. Hakkai flicked on his own torch and Gojyo hunkered down to dig the lump out, carefully, with his fingers and a small pick.
“Willya look at that.”
Hakkai looked. It was a piece of decorative wall in the Incan style, about half a meter square. On it he could see an eroded, curved line with some straight bits leading from it, and a suggestion of tiny, oblong clusters...
“That looks like part of a sun-and-grain motif,” Hakkai said, waving the torch to follow the pattern in the brick. “Like in the pictures I’ve seen of Mameria. It looks broken on the edges, like it--”
“Like it fell,” Gojyo said. He stood and grinned at Hakkai, and it was his full grin, open and sunny like his half-downtrodden attitude of the last day or so had never existed. Hakkai felt an answering excitement-- because it signified a find, of course.
The climb up the opposite side of the valley was steep but productive. Up there more daylight squeezed through the leaves and they found more ruins, stones in little piles as if they’d been shaken loose by an earthquake. Something major existed, or used to exist, nearby. Hakkai itched to take digitized photos of them all and then to collate them on his contextualized software, to see them as they might have looked when they’d been erected. The light was fading but he couldn’t stop trying to find more of them; they were close, so close--
“Oi, Hakkai!” Gojyo called at one point, his voice muffled. “Come see this. It’s weird.”
Hakkai followed Gojyo’s voice through the brush and broke through into a clearing. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw it: it looked like an arch built into the hillside, like an entrance to the underworld. The ground was clear around it and the sky was clear overhead in an almost perfect circle cut into the tree-canopy, so narrow that it would only be visible from straight above. Grain-and-sun designs twisted down the sides of the stone arch and more groups of oblongs decorated its top, looking like... like... snake scales. Dragon scales. They dripped from the rain, now slackening.
“Beautiful and powerful,” Hakkai murmured. Was it a monument to Pachacamac, dragon husband to Mama Pacha? This could be the door to the home of the artifact, certainly. Except-- it didn’t seem to go anywhere except into dirt. Gojyo kicked the ground inside the arch, and it was ground like any other.
“Do we dig, señor?” Nunco asked.
“No,” Hakkai said. He was staring again at the outline of the arch, its position, its up-and-around dragon, the little markings inside his scales and the hint of water-creature and waves that surrounded him...
“No, señor?”
“Gojyo. Draw me the symbols from the Machu Picchu tablet, would you?” Powerful but alone, searching for her grainy, dragoness fertility. Ukoku was a twisted bastard but he had poetic vision. This was a story about a mating dance. The Incans’ written language was buried in their art, like so many cultures Hakkai had seen, thousands of years apart and thousands of miles away... “Gojyo. Do it now.”
“Ha-- yessir.” Hakkai heard Gojyo digging through his bag, heard the flap of paper. “Gettin’ dark. Suppose we should try and camp here.”
“If only we could get in. But this is not the door,” Hakkai said.
“Hakkai?” Gojyo had an odd tone to his voice. “How’d you know that?”
“I just--”
His explanation was cut off by a thup-thup-thup-thupping, loud and growing louder. Leaves and dirt whipped off the ground into a cyclone of detritus. They were so close to finding... Hakkai was so close to reading the words that weren’t there... why hadn’t he had Gojyo draw the key earlier?
“Shit! They’re shooting! Get the hell out of here, you guys,” Gojyo yelled as gunshots rang through the forest and pinged off the rocks, the gorgeous stone art that Hakkai was trying to read, thank you very much--
Gojyo grabbed his arm and yanked and ran and perforce Hakkai ran, too, stumbling through the underbrush. Nunco and his fellow countrymen scattered.
“Stop shooting, idiots!” a voice blared in Spanish, an oily voice that Hakkai recognized even over a loudspeaker. Hakkai risked a look over his shoulder and saw a helicopter hovering above the steep hill, Ukoku hanging out one half of the cockpit. It couldn’t possibly land; they’d have to have been desperate, and perhaps crazy, to bring it down through that narrow opening in the trees. “Climb down, grab the gringos, don’t kill them or you get nothing. Hey, Gojyo! Thanks for leading us here, though I almost lost you when your beacon took a dive into a gorge. Lookie lookie, there’s a whole mess of caverns under here--”
“Asshole!” Gojyo stopped running and reached into his jacket pocket to yank out his pistol. As fast and accurate with bullets as he was with arrows, Gojyo fired off two shots: one shattered a device in Ukoku’s hand, and the other glanced off the helicopter’s windshield but didn’t break it. Whoever had been shooting at them before started up again.
“Stop shooting, you morons--” Ukoku shouted.
“Shit,” Gojyo said, and took off again. Hakkai followed, almost laughing with the danger and the adrenaline and the excitement of their find. Suddenly Gojyo twisted and grabbed the front of Hakkai’s shirt and pulled and fell, and Hakkai went down after him.
Thump! Thump-crack!
Silence.
END PART 1
The Lost City of Paititi, Part Two
no subject
We love it too, Gojyo. Boy, do we ever.
This is even more hilarious and awesome on subsequent reads. LOVE. (Also, I have a mad!crush on Ukoku Santiago. Which, ew, but I can't help myself. You've written him as so devilishly charming. A different kind of devilishly charming from the devilishly charming Gojyo, of course, but still.)
no subject
I was sooo afraid to write Ukoku. So I made him all flamboyant and well-spoken. ;)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Your characterisations of Hakkai and Gojyo are excellent and the concept is so hilarious I can barely breathe from laughter.
Gorgeous :)
no subject