Curses! Read Online Free PDF

other Mayan codices in existence, and the last one had been found in 1860. All of them were owned by state libraries—in Dresden, Madrid, and Paris—and none were yet completely translated. Assuming that the subject matter of this one was like the others', the fund of knowledge about Mayan ceremony, religion, and language had just been increased by a whopping thirty-three-and-a-third percent.
    Howard invited the rest of the crew into the recess to have a look. Whether more than one or two had any idea of the significance of what they saw was doubtful, but they peered through the slit into the stone chest in respectful silence, then backed off a few steps to leave the two anthropologists to their professional talk.
    "God, do you know what that must be worth?" Howard exclaimed with a rumble of laughter.
    A telling comment, but not quite up to professional standards; not in Gideon's view. Its market value was irrelevant; the codex was the property of the Republic of Mexico and properly so. It would never be sold.
    "It could be the most significant Mayan find since Palenque,” Gideon said stuffily, as much for the crew's benefit as Howard's.
    It didn't do much to enlighten Howard. “I could get you two million bucks for that tomorrow,” he said. “Easy."
    He laughed again and stood up. “Let's get on with it.” He turned to give instructions to the foreman on completing the delicate process of levering up the lid and getting it off without damaging the intricate inscriptions.
    Gideon retreated to an unoccupied corner of the landing and watched quietly, occasionally wiping the sweat from his eyes. He was no expert in this kind of work, which had more in common with engineering than with anthropology.
    Neither was Howard, it turned out. As he and the laborers grunted, pouring sweat, to wedge more poles under the lid, something went wrong. One of the poles was tapped too sharply with a sledgehammer and popped out like a cork to clatter on the floor. The great lid teetered to the right, swayed on its ropes like a colossal pendulum while the workers fought to balance it, and then, with agonizing slowness, tipped and went grinding ponderously over the rim of the chest with a sound like that of the last terrible block sliding into place at the end of Aida. It smashed into the wall, one of its richly carved corners crumbling away. That was bad enough, but on its way it also bumped against one of the props that had been erected as shoring while the passageway was dug out.
    The prop was knocked off its footing, and for a breathless moment it hung askew, suspended from the crossbeam above it. Then the crossbeam groaned and came down, and it seemed as if half the vaulted ceiling followed with a roar and a billow of sour, choking dust. There were frightened shouts, but when the coughing stopped they found, amazingly enough, that none of the big, wedge-shaped stone blocks had hit anybody, although everyone had been showered with the rubble that the ancient Maya had used to fill their interior walls. Gideon came out of it with another dent in his straw hat and a scrape on the back of his hand. One of the crew had broken his watch; another had chipped a tooth somehow. Almost everyone was coughing and spitting.
    While Gideon was still checking to make sure they were all right, Howard hissed sharply; a sigh of relief.
    "It's okay,” he called shakily, meaning the codex.
    It had been shielded by the lid, which still lay across the chest at an angle. Only Gideon seemed to notice that the wonderful bas-reliefs had been chipped by falling rock in four or five places. Add those to the broken corner, and a gloriously preserved find was now just another piece of moldering Mayan art. And it was going to get worse if Howard persisted. But surely he would quit now and sit down to do some planning.
    But no. “All-right,” he said in a way that told Gideon he was just getting started. “All right now."
    He spat dirt from his mouth, leaned over the