Sky Coyote Read Online Free PDF

was there, because they came in coolly enough and proceeded to wait on us. Great food, if deliberately weird: the eggs were pink and green and the orange juice was from blood oranges, which Houbert drank with a smirk from a golden sacrificial vessel. The Mayans whisked his napkin open for him and dished out his Franco-Mayan cuisine with reverence and patience, as befitted the Father of Heaven.
    “Do you like our regional variant of
oeufs crocodiles?
These fellows can prepare anything if they’re shown how once. Try the
pommes de terre Quetzalcoatl!”
Houbert leaned across to push a golden platter in my direction. I lifted my hand, but a Mayan had anticipated me and scooped a big starchy mass onto my plate.
    “Swell,” I affirmed. “You know, you’ve got quite an unusual setup here. I can’t remember when I’ve been at a base with such, uh, flair.”
    “Well, of course we’ve had a long time to develop everything.” Houbert looked pleased. “I daresay we’ve been the premiere research facility for a good three millennia. That’s what makes it such a pity … But we won’t speak of it, no, we absolutelymustn’t. I warn you, I sob like a child when I contemplate the future.”
    I looked at Latif, who nodded gravely and rolled his eyes.
    “Sorry to hear that.”
    “I was hoping—if it isn’t presumptuous—you’ve been to such fabulous places, lived in them, worked in them, passed effortlessly as one of their denizens. How did you bear it? You saw Rome in all her splendor. Byzantium, too. How does one cope with the inevitable death of all that beauty and elegance?” Houbert looked at me beseechingly.
    “Well …” I bit the end off a croissant and chewed slowly, giving myself time to come up with an answer. “It wasn’t all like that, you know. There was a lot of garbage and disease and starvation, too. Maybe that’s it, you know, sir? You see the bad with the good long enough, and by the time a change comes, you’re ready to welcome it. No more gilded carriages in the streets, but no more crippled beggars either. Sometimes it’s a good idea for weeds to cover a place.”
    “I see your point.” Houbert looked disappointed. “But in that case, there’s really no analogy possible, is there? For of course we have no crippled beggars here. No ugliness, no injustice, no hunger. Only perfection. No reason for the hypothetical gods to take their revenge on us.”
    I nodded and stuffed the rest of the croissant in my mouth, but I thought privately that I’d seen some perfect pleasure gardens go up in flames too, and sometimes it seemed like a good idea at the time. Not that I’ve ever been the one with the torch, of course. That’s not my job; I’m what Dr. Zeus used to call a Preserver, not an Enforcer. But, then, nowadays nobody even remembers that there ever were Enforcers, except for really old operatives like me.
    “I suppose one learns not to care,” mused Houbert, spreadingmango jam on a helping of teosinte polenta. “After all, however many palace revolutions one flees, there’s always another palace somewhere. For us, at least. The charm of the new continually soothing away regret for the old. Do you not find it so?”
    “Sometimes, yes.”
    “And of course we immortals must above all things cultivate our sense of enchantment.” Houbert spooned a massive glob into his mouth, and jam dripped into his beard. One of the Mayans deftly and immediately napkined him. “That’s one of the things, the
truly
important things I’ve been endeavoring to impart to our little colleague here. Life is ours, eternally; whether a gift or a curse is largely up to our own efforts. Boredom is a dreadful thing to carry through the centuries. One must preserve one’s sense of wonder at life. One must make it a grand continual game, full of rapture, revelry, and surprises.”
    He had a point there. You do have to play certain mind games to keep from going nuts. A good sex life helps, too.
    “Your problem,