As Apu Tupa had promised, a viewer was placed on the platform for them. It consisted of a flat gray sheet of soft rigid material supported by a single narrow pole that widened into a circular supportive base. There were no visible controls, no antenna, no cable or cords.

Carter had determined not to watch, but when images finally appeared on the screen he found he could not keep himself from staring along with the rest of his companions.

The view was of an expansive hospital room gaily decorated in ancient Inca colors and designs, a surgery become operating theater in more ways than one. Clad in slick, brightly colored gowns, several men and women waited expectantly. They wore garish makeup and no masks.

Carter ignored the running, upbeat commentary of the unseen announcer. Two attendants dressed like refugees from a bad Broadway play entered, supporting an obviously sedated Da Rimini between them. He could clearly hear her moan. She had been attired in a skimpy yet tasteful costume which Fewick professorially described as a variant on the traditional costume of the Inca “Chosen Women.”

“This makes no sense.” No one paid any attention to him, their eyes glued to the drama taking place on the screen. “It can’t go any further. It’s got to stop.”

The attendants lifted Da Rimini and placed her gently atop the lavishly decorated operating table, then bound her wrists and ankles at her sides. The costume she wore left her midriff completely exposed and little else to the imagination.

Trang Ho kept up a running commentary of her own, which involved much critiquing of the camera-work.

As the two attendants stepped out of the picture the other occupants of the room moved forward to arraign themselves around the table. The one standing near Da Rimini’s head raised his arms and began to chant. Carter felt sweat running down his back and sides as the liturgy rose in volume. Music from unseen sources accompanied the chanters, an off-putting mix of traditional Inca harmonics and modern electronics. He recalled Fewick describing how the ancient Incas used to fashion musical instruments from the bones of their victims.

The song leader lowered his hands and his voice. A much younger man approached the table and snapped his fingers importantly, in response to which a complex, ominous mechanical device descended from the ceiling to hang suspended above the table and its helpless occupant. Da Rimini’s glazed eyes focused on the device and despite the sedation she managed to utter a quite respectable scream.

The younger man pointed a narrow metal tube at the sacrifice’s body while the background music soared to new dramatic heights. Though the instrument had a blunt tip and he could make out no sharp edges, Carter found himself looking away. Trang Ho adjusted her camera with ghoulish anticipation.

“Well, would you look at that,” Ashwood murmured.

“I would not have expected it,” Fewick added.

Carter forced himself to turn back to the screen.

There was no sign of blood, no picture of coiled, pulsing intestines exposed to the air. Instead he saw that a second image had been superimposed in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. In exquisite detail and full color it displayed the inside of Francesca da Rimini’s lower torso. Organs glistened and rippled, blood raced within veins and arteries.

Carter exhaled slowly. The critical “sacrifice” was symbolic. It had not occurred to him that the Contisuyuns might be able to “read” Da Rimini’s guts perfectly well without having to cut her open. Like those of his companions, his expectations had been preconditioned by ancestral memories and bad movies.

The interior scan drifted and floated, examining first one part of her body, then another. It changed focus effortlessly, moving with equal ease in and out as well as up and down and from side to side. The traditionally clad professionals clustered around the table engaged in a lively ongoing discussion as the scanner technician continuously readjusted his probe in response to their requests.

“You will recall,” Fewick was saying, “that Apu Tupa never said they were going to kill. Only ‘sacrifice’ her. It is an interesting modern interpretation of an ancient rite.”

“Surely they’re not going to make the decision whether or not to attack Earth based on a recreational survey of the bitch’s insides?” Carter murmured.

“Probably not,” the archaeologist agreed. “Like the sacrifice itself, I suspect the purpose of this ritual is largely symbolic.” He shrugged. “Or maybe they are. What do you think, Moe?”

The tom sleepily raised his head only long enough to yawn expansively.

As the ritual continued the watchers one by one grew bored and turned away. Trang Ho was visibly disappointed.

“Waste of time,” she muttered. “Looks like standard medical college instruction. It’ll never sell.” She brightened. “Unless I alter things a little bit.”

“Maybe you’d better discuss any journalistic inventions with Da Rimini,” Igor suggested, “since it looks like she’ll be rejoining us after all.”

XII

When she was finally allowed to rejoin her companions, Da Rimini proved decidedly uninterested in discussing the print and film rights to her experience, or much of anything else for that matter. Though she responded at first to the Fernández brothers’ offer of assistance with an impressive string of curses in both Spanish and Quechua, she eventually allowed them to seat her on one of the beds with which they had been provided.

She sat there trembling slightly, though whether from fear or the lingering aftereffects of the sedative she’d been dosed with no one could tell.

“I thought they goin’ to kill me,” she muttered. “I was sure they goin’ to kill me.” She looked up. “What they do, anyway? I don’ remember nothin’.”

Ashwood smiled contentedly. “Well, for one thing you screamed. Quite loudly.”

“They didn’t cut you,” Fewick told her. “They ran some kind of advanced CAT scanner or X-ray machine over your abdomen and used it to take a look inside your body.”

“I see.” Suddenly she gazed sharply at the plump archaeologist. Her intensity was beginning to return. “What parts of my body?” she asked dangerously.

Bearing in mind a previously demonstrated proclivity toward violence on the part of the attractive young woman confronting him, Fewick considered carefully before replying.

“Your stomach. Your kidneys and liver. Your intestines.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “That’s all?”

Fewick nodded tersely, found a reason to begin grooming Moe’s neck.

“That’s okay, then.” She leaned back against the wall, glared angrily around the enclosure. “An’ nobody tried to stop them from takin’ me.”

“Why should we risk ourselves for you?” Ashwood shot back. “Besides, what did you expect us to do? Take on armed men with our bare hands? If they’d taken me instead what would you have done?”

Da Rimini nodded slowly. “Prob’ly the same thing. Did it help them make their damn decision?”

“They have not said anything to us yet,” Igor told her. He looked over at the Fernández brothers. “You were gone a long time with them. Do you think they can do what they say?”

“We don’t know what they can do,” Manco replied. “They talk a lot but they didn’t show us anything. No bombs or nothing.” He paused. “They asked us to help them.”

“Y’all ain’t goin’ to?” Ashwood said.

“Of course not,” Manco replied dutifully. “We are not interested in conquering Europe.”

“I wish I could have done something,” Trang Ho murmured.

Da Rimini looked over at her. “To help me?”

“No.” The reporter eyed her camera. “I don’t know how those pictures I took off the viewer will come out. It would’ve been better if I’d been there in person.”

Da Rimini started for her but soon had to return to the bed. She was still too shaky to engage in any kind of active pursuit.

“All my life I hear of the gold of Paititi,” she muttered. “All my life I have searched for it. If I found it I knew I would defend it against anyone who tried to take it from me. But I did not expect to have to fight for it with the original owners.”

Carter was studying the exhibits on the platform opposite theirs. “I wonder if maybe we haven’t overlooked some important bit of science. Maybe there is a lot to be learned from studying somebody else’s entrails.”

Ashwood made a derisive sound. “Economists have been doing it for years.”

Apu Tupa did not return for several days. When he finally did put in an appearance he was accompanied by a woman in a green uniform who proceeded to prod and poke the reluctant Da Rimini.

“What was that all about?” she asked when the woman had departed.