Reporte de llegada de los vehículos recolectores

'We have suffered many earthquakes here this year,' the priest told them, without expression. His English vocabulary was perfect; but he had not had enough conversational practice to be able to emphasise the right words. 'The earth has opened here, and here. A wall of the church fell here. And there, you see, we lost one complete row of houses. Four people were hurt. One was killed. Do you wish to look at his grave?'

Henry flapped his Panama hat in front of his face to cool himself down. Beside him, Gil was dressed in nothing but his sawn-off denim shorts, but his face was still scrunched up against the mid-afternoon glare, and his forehead was studded with sweat.

They had reached San Hipolito after a dusty, winding drive up into the Sierra de Juarez. The sky was as dark blue as concentrated copper-sulphate solution, and utterly cloudless. You could have driven through San Hipolito without even realising that it was there; two rows of adobe houses, a small dust-coloured church, a farm gate and a collection of rusted milk-churns. A monotonous bell rang far away across the hills, reminding Henry uncomfortably of the bell that had tolled in last night's dream.

Their first surprise had been that the soil around San Hipolito had been so deeply riven with cracks. On the north-west side of the village, half a hillside had broken open and dropped away; and there were deep crevices running all the way across the main highway. In places, the tarmac was so cracked that it looked like a satellite map of the Mississippi delta. As the priest had explained, one of the end walls of the church had collapsed. A deserted wheel -barrow stood hopefully beside the rubble, waiting for the siesta to finish, so that it could once again be brought back into the service of the Lord.

The priest was short, only five feet five, but thickly built, with a large head, and penetrating eyes. His principal flock, he explained, were at Ojos Negros, but he had been born in San Hipolito, and the people here had known him all his life.

'We've been looking for a friend of ours, an American girl named Sylvia Stoner,' said Henry. 'We heard she might have come this way. Maybe a month ago, maybe

longer.'

The priest said, 'Come inside' and led them through the churchyard, where stone crosses and blind-eyed angels baked in the hundred-degree sun, through the heavy dried-oak door, and into the church itself. Although a large rhomboid of sunlight fell across the nave from the half-collapsed wall, the church was very much cooler inside, and they sat down with relief on one of the polished pews.

'I wondered when somebody would come to find out what happened,' said the priest.

'Oh, yes?' asked Gil, looking around, at the single stained-glass window, at the simple altar, at the silent confessionals.

'Do not understand this wrongly,' the priest replied. He coughed, and cleared his throat. 'Everything was properly reported, to the church authorities, and to the police at Ensenada.'

'What was properly reported to the church authorities, and to the police at Ensenada?' Henry enquired.

'You came because of the girl, yes?' the priest replied, his thick eyebrows crowding together in perplexity.

'That's right, Sylvia Stoner. Pretty girl, blonde hair. Always wore a silver chain around her ankle.'

'And you do not know what happened here?' the priest asked them.

Henry shook his head. 'I think you'd better tell us.'

'Well ... said the priest, licking his lips anxiously. 'If you do not already know ...' 'Father,' Henry put in, 'this information is vital. A friend of ours is in really serious danger. It could be that it has something to do with whatever happened here in San Hipolito.'

'I suppose it can do no harm, if I tell you,' the priest said, just as worriedly.

'It certainly won't do anybody any good if you don't,' Gil pointed out.

'Very well, then, come with me,' said the priest. He stood up, and beckoned, and they followed him along the nave to the very end of the church, where the wall had collapsed. They could see that the ground had gaped open to a width of nearly fifteen feet, and that there was a sixty-foot crevice zig-zagging from the middle of the graveyard to the foot of the very front pew. It looked as if part of the crevice had once been a vault of sorts because six or seven feet of the wall was lined with terracotta tiles, salt-glazed so that they were shiny black.

'Of course you know how bad the earth tremors have been,' said the Priest, standing right at the very edge of the crevice. 'You have probably felt them in San Diego.' 'I had no idea they were as strong as this,' said Henry.

'Well, they have been less frequent lately, and not so powerful. But the night when this wall collapsed, there was quite a severe tremor, three point four, and many houses and outbuildings were destroyed, all around this district. When I felt the tremor in my house at Ojos Negros, I had a strange feeling that something terrible had happened, and sure enough I was telephoned to come at once.'

'There's no damage here that can't be repaired,' Henry commented, shading his eyes so that he could look out of the church and into the sun. 'A couple of truckloads of concrete should put you right.'

The priest rubbed his hands together, slowly and nervously. 'I am afraid that

something happened here which all of the concrete in the world could not put right.

In this vault, there rested a box, a long wooden box, carved and sealed. I still have it, but it has been taken to my house atOjos Negros for safekeeping. Up until the night of the earth tremor, the box was hidden below the ground, and covered with an iron trap, three inches thick, and tiled over so that it was indistinguishable from the remainder of the church floor. But, crack! when the earth shifted, the iron trap was broken in half, and the wooden box was exposed to view. My church curator, Miguel Estovar, ran here to the church as quick as he could, but he was too late. The trap had been broken, the seals had been damaged, and the wooden box was empty.' Henry said, in a quiet voice, 'Tell me, Father, what was inside the wooden box?' The priest stopped wringing his hands, and instead chivvied his fingertips anxiously against his sleeve.

Even more quietly, Henry asked, 'Was it Yaomauitl?' The priest stared. 'You know about Yaomauitl?'

Henry nodded. 'We are Night Warriors. When the sun sets, I am Kasyx, and this is Tebulot.'

Immediately, without any further questions, and without any ceremony at all, the priest went down on one knee, and clasped Henry's hands. Then he clasped Gil's hands, and kissed them. As softly and quickly as if he were reciting his rosary, he said, 'The legends always said that the Night Warriors would come, if ever Yaomauitl was freed, but I never believed them.' He looked up at both of them, the sunlight shining around their heads like haloes, and he said, with the deepest of emotion, 'You have restored my faith. It is like a miracle.'

'We're not that miraculous,' said Gil. 'We only started training last night.'

The priest stood up, and gripped them both by the shoulder. 'I know that you will defend us. God be praised.'

'Tell us something about Yaomauitl,' said Henry. 'Was he buried here for very long?' The priest said, 'He was buried here in 1687. It happened after a dream battle in which it is said that sixty of the finest Night Warriors lost their lives. He was placed inside a box of elm wood, through which evil manifestations may not pass, and the box was sealed with the nine holy seals of God. The iron trap was then lowered over his tomb, and the iron trap was blessed by nine priests and crossed ninety-nine times with holy water. The church of San Hipolito was built on top of the tomb, to further sanctify this place. Yaomauitl has lain here ever since - until he was freed by that earth tremor.'

'Do you know what he looks like?' asked Henry.

'Come with me,' said the priest. 'I have a contemporary woodcut of the entombing of Yaomauitl in my study. It shows the Devil quite clearly. It also shows the nine seals, and the Night Warriors who entrapped Yaomauitl at last.'

They left the church and walked across the glaring courtyard at the back, until they reached a small adobe house shaded by scrub trees. A Mexican woman was outside on the verandah, cleaning moths off the oil-lamps with white spirit. She watched Henry and Gil in suspicious silence as the priest took them into the house.

'Maria is like most of the people of San Hipolito,' the priest explained. 'She doesn't take to strangers very readily.'

'You still haven't explained what any of this has to do with Sylvia,' said Gil.

'Well,' said the priest, ushering them into his house, and then leading them through to the living-room, 'this is because you have to understand the background of what occurred before you can come to the same conclusion as I. There are no easily explained facts. There are no reliable witnesses, either. But everything indicates that my assumption is correct, and I have to say that Monsignor Del Parral in Ensenada concurs with my opinion.'

The inside of the small adobe house was cool and musty. The furniture was simple:

rushwork chairs and plain wooden sofas. The walls were painted white, and hung with brightly coloured native paintings of Biblical scenes -Joseph and his coat of many colours, Moses in the bulrushes, the Pieta. The floors were tiled dark brown, and there was a basket of eucalyptus logs beside the hearth. Henry and Gil waited for a minute or two while the priest went through to his study. He came back with a red cardboard folder, which he laid on the low table in the middle of the room, and opened. Inside was a sheet of thick art paper, yellow at the edges and badly discoloured, but printed with the most richly detailed woodcut that Henry had ever seen. It was in the style of Diirer's Apocalypse, and although it was not nearly as accomplished as a work by Diirer, it clearly showed the Devil Yaomauitl being imprisoned in his elm-wood box.

'How old is this?' asked Gil, quietly.

'The print is relatively new, 1880 or thereabouts. But the original woodcut from which it was taken - which is now in the Museum of Religious Art in Mexico City - that was dated 1687. The artist was Paolo Placido SJ.'

Henry and Gil examined the woodcut with gradually increasing dread. It depicted a long coffin-shaped box, richly and fantastically carved with ivy and mistletoe and other holy plants, as well as the faces of angels and saints, being lowered by derricks into a tile-lined crevice in the ground. There were twenty or thirty people standing around the box, some of whom were dressed in elaborate armour and winged helmets. Henry and Gil both recognised a very much earlier form of Tebulot's armour, and a weapon that was primitive by the standards of the weapon that

Tebulot carried now, but which must at the time have been the most powerful machine that anybody could have dreamed of.

It was the illustration of Yaomauitl which disturbed them the most, however. He was tall, with dark slanted eyes that even after three hundred years still seemed to stare out at them with glistening malevolence. His body was gristly, with protruding ribs, and a grotesque pelvic girdle, from which depended a long sinewy penis. His hands and his feet were like claws, with curved razor-sharp nails - the kind of nails that could take your eyes out with one scratch.

Both Henry and Gil recognised the Devil at once. He was older, and more battle scarred, but he was indisputably the parent of the creature that had taken Susan hostage; the 'boy' who for one split-second had revealed to them the real shape of his body and the real wickedness of his soul.

Henry said, 'Yes,' gently, and handed the woodcut back.

'You recognise him, then?' the priest asked them.

Gil nodded. 'We saw one of his kids, if that's what you can call them.'

The priest stared at the woodcut with an expression of solemn apprehension. 'Then it has already started, the spreading of his seed.'

'Yes, Father,' said Henry. 'That was how Sylvia Stoner died.'

The priest looked up at him. 'Night Warriors,' he whispered, with reverence. 'Perhaps you won't believe this, but I have been dreaming that you would come. It says in De Daemonialitate that the Night Warriors would always rise in response to a

reappearance of the Devil, in any one of his manifestations. And here you are. You will forgive me if you are no surprise to me.'

'It's more helpful that we're not,' Henry smiled, and grasped the priest's shoulder.

Perhaps there was still some residue of Ashapola's power in Henry's hand, for the priest glanced at it quickly, and smiled the smile of the reassured.

'Now then,' the priest said, 'You wish to know what connection was formed between Yaomauitl and your friend Sylvia Stoner. Let me tell you what happened as far as I know it; then I will take you to see Ludovico, who is the only person in the village who knowingly encountered Yaomauitl after the box was broken open.' He asked, 'Would you care for some wine? We cultivate our own vines here, you know. I cannot guarantee that it is as smooth as anything from Napa Valley, but it is quite

refreshing.'

He poured each of them a glass of dark red pinot wine, fruity and aromatic, and then he sat back and said, 'Your friend Sylvia and her male companion arrived here in the last week of February. I remember that. They came in a wagon - you know, four-wheel drive - and they said they were touring Baja California on vacation. They asked me if I knew of any place they could stay for a day or two, and I directed them

to Senora Rosario's house. Her two boys left home to work in America, her husband died, and so she has many spare rooms.'

'What did Sylvia's male companion look like?' asked Henry.

'Well, you could say that he looked like a tennis player who has let his training go by the way,' said the priest. 'Curly hair, not too tall, handsome but very untidy.

Unshaven, crumpled clothes.' 'Did you catch his name?'

The priest shook his head. 'All the time she called him "baby". They came to take pictures of the church, and of the village, but they took no care with their pictures, and they spoke too loudly of what they were going to do on their vacation.'

'What are you trying to imply?' Henry asked him.

'Simply that they were not genuinely here on vacation. They came, like a few other Americanos have come before them, because they had heard that some of the villagers have another crop, apart from grapevines.'

'You mean -?'

'Yes, my friends. Marijuana. The fragrant strain known amongst connoisseurs as San Juarez Paradise Number One. Very difficult to find, very expensive. And not many Americans know that it is grown in the hills around San Hipolito.'

Neither Henry nor Gil said a word about the priest's apparent approval of the marijuana crop, but the priest himself sipped his wine and smiled at them over the rim of his glass.

'I can see that you are surprised that I condone the sale of narcotics. Well - I do not condone it, but I do turn a blind eye to it. There is no money in San Hipolito, my friends. Most of the soil is stony and barren, so conventional farming produces little reward. Without the sale of San Juarez Paradise Number One, this village would die.

The people who live here would be dispossessed, and the church would fall into ruin.

I have to make a practical choice between a trade which transgresses the laws of men and a state of poverty and suffering which would transgress the laws of God.' 'So Sylvia and her companion were here for grass?' asked

Henry.

'Of course. There is nothing else here that would entice an American tourist, no matter how eccentric, to stay in San Hipolito for even a few minutes.'

'Then what happened?' asked Gil.

The priest spread his hands. 'They stayed for two days, maybe three, and I heard from one of the little birds who tell me such things that they were negotiating with the

Perez family to buy two thousand dollars' worth of marijuana, first quality. Perez of course was holding out for more money, and Sylvia and her companion were constantly telephoning to America to see if they could drum up more promises of sales.'

He paused for a moment, and then he said, much more gravely, 'There came then the day of the earth tremor. The ground split, and everybody in the village rushed into the surrounding fields in case their houses fell on them. When they returned, they found that the church wall had fallen, and that Yaomauitl had escaped from his elm-wood box. They sent out dogs, and men with shotguns, but there was no trace of the Devil, or even of his passing.'

'Sylvia and her companion were still in the village?'

The priest nodded. 'They stayed for one more night and one more day. But certain things about them were strange. The night after Yaomauitl had escaped, Seftora Rosario heard them upstairs in their bedroom. They seemed to be arguing, or at least the girl Sylvia seemed to be arguing. Senora Rosario did not recognise the other voice. It was a man's voice, but very harsh and loud, and it sounded as if it was coming from everywhere at once. She said that it frightened her to hear it. However, it did not last for very long, because the argument finished with great abruptness,

The priest nodded. 'They stayed for one more night and one more day. But certain things about them were strange. The night after Yaomauitl had escaped, Seftora Rosario heard them upstairs in their bedroom. They seemed to be arguing, or at least the girl Sylvia seemed to be arguing. Senora Rosario did not recognise the other voice. It was a man's voice, but very harsh and loud, and it sounded as if it was coming from everywhere at once. She said that it frightened her to hear it. However, it did not last for very long, because the argument finished with great abruptness,