12.19.19.17.13 DECEMBER 14, 2012
FIFTEEN
THE 10 FREEWAY WAS SHUT DOWN NEAR CLOVERFIELD SO THAT the National Guard could transport shipments of supplies and food to the west side. Stanton took the side streets, passing abandoned strip malls, elementary schools, and auto-body shops. Traffic moved slowly despite the few cars on the road, with National Guard checkpoints almost every mile. The governor of California had accepted Cavanagh and Stanton’s controversial plan and signed an emergency-powers act, enacting the first citywide quarantine in U.S. history.
The boundaries had been secured by the National Guard: from the San Fernando Valley in the north, east into the San Gabriel, south into Orange County, and west to the ocean. No planes were allowed out of the airports, and the coast guard had deployed nearly two hundred boats to secure the port and coastline. So far most Angelenos had reacted to the quarantine with a calm and cooperation that surprised even the most optimistic in Sacramento and Washington.
Beyond the quarantine, the CDC was testing people who’d visited L.A. or residents who’d traveled out in the last week. They checked manifestos for every plane that left any L.A. airport recently, hunted down Amtrak travelers through credit-card receipts, and tracked many of those who went by road by toll-booth passes and license-plate snapshots. Thus far they’d found eight cases in New York, four in Chicago, and three in Detroit, in addition to the nearly eleven hundred people now sick with VFI inside the Southland.
Stanton saw devastating patterns as the number of infected grew. All he and the other doctors could do was try to keep patients comfortable. For most victims, partial insomnia and sweating began after a brief latent period, then seizures and fevers and total insomnia followed. Those who’d been awake for three days or more were hardest to watch. They began to have delusions and panic attacks, then the hallucinations and violent outbursts Volcy and Gutierrez had shown. Death was likely within a week. Nearly twenty of the infected had already succumbed.
The sight of camouflage Humvees, and men and women in tan uniforms carrying machine guns on Lincoln Boulevard, was deeply unsettling. Stanton waited to show his ID in a line of cars on his way back to Venice. He glanced down at his phone, to the newest list of names of infected patients. The victims spanned every ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and nearly every age. Glasses had protected some, but plenty who wore them had been infected. The only groups immune to VFI seemed to be blind people, whose optic nerves were severed from their brains, and newborns. The optic nerves were undeveloped in babies, and until the sheath surrounding them matured, the disease couldn’t make its way into the brain. That protection wouldn’t last beyond six months, so it gave him little solace.
Stanton inched his Audi forward in the security line while scanning the patient list. On it were doctors and nurses he’d met at Presbyterian as well as two CDC officers he knew and liked.
Finally he saw Maria Gutierrez and her son, Ernesto.
He was supposed to be able to deal with mortality. And he had seen some bad cases in his time. But nothing had prepared Stanton for this. He needed grounding, and any other time he would’ve called Nina. She’d gone back out onto the water again after leaving his condo. He’d called to tell her VFI was airborne. Technically, Stanton should’ve ordered her to come ashore and get tested. But she had no symptoms of any kind, so he wanted her to stay far, far away. Buses and public bathrooms and almost every hospital in the city showed evidence of prion now, and even hazmat cleaning agents couldn’t decontaminate them.
His cellphone rang. “This is Stanton.”
“It’s Chel Manu.”
“Dr. Manu. Have you made any progress?”
She described the father–son-glyph revelation and the first section of the codex they’d translated. Though he didn’t follow her entirely, Stanton was impressed by her obvious ingenuity, by her command of the complex language, and by the vast amount of history she had at her disposal. He also heard the passion in her voice. He might not be able to trust this woman, but her energy lifted his spirits.
“There’s no definite geography in the first section,” Chel went on. “But it’s such a closely written narrative. We’re very hopeful the scribe will tell us more about his location in the later pages.”
“How long until you have the rest?” Stanton asked.
“We’re working on it. It could be a few days.”
“How long did it take you to do this first section?”
“About twenty hours.”
Stanton glanced at the clock. Like him, she’d been going nonstop. “Any trouble sleeping?” he asked her.
“I drifted off for a few minutes,” she said. “I’ve just been working.”
“Do you have family in the city? Are they okay?”
“Only my mother, and she’s fine. What about your family?”
“Don’t have much of one,” he said. “But my dog and ex-wife are okay.” Stanton noticed that the word ex-wife rolled off his tongue easier than it had in a while.
Chel sighed, then said, “Ma k’o ta ne jun ka tere’k.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“It’s a prayer indígenas say. It means, Let no one be left behind.”
After a pause, Stanton said, “If you have any symptoms, call me first.”
WAVES CRASHING WERE rarely audible on the Walk, but tonight they were the only sounds Stanton could hear. Gone were the noisy kids usually in front of the marijuana stores, and the whooping from late-night parties in the sand. He parked beneath the massive mural of Abbot Kinney and found the boardwalk empty. The cops had sent everyone home or to one of the local homeless centers.
But when it came to hiding out, the citizens of Ocean Front were some of the craftiest in the city. Stanton pulled the six boxes of eye shields he’d taken from the lab and put them in his bag. There were a thousand things he had to attend to, but the boardwalk freaks were his friends and neighbors. It was hard not to feel powerless right now, and this was one thing he could actually do, no matter how absurd it was.
First he checked the public restrooms, where he found a couple huddled inside. After handing them eye shields, Stanton continued on, and in a nook between tattoo shops he found a guy he knew vaguely, who called himself the “World’s Funniest Wino.” His usual song went “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, let’s get drunk.” Tonight, he just laughed boorishly as Stanton laid a shield in front of him.
Behind the Jewish senior center, he found four teenagers hiding in a VW bus, smoking weed. “You want?” one of them asked, holding the joint toward him.
“Put these eye shields on, guys,” Stanton said, waving it off.
Outside Venice’s only plastic-surgery storefront, he stopped to look at the graffiti stenciled across the face of BOTOX ON THE BEACH. Stanton had seen the symbol before around Venice but had never understood what it had to do with 2012:
He continued south, baffled by the strange image. He recalled from somewhere that a snake eating its own tail was a Greek symbol, not, as far as he knew, a Maya one. But people were sure to make all kinds of strange connections now.
The metal gates of Groundwork Coffee were down, and a small sign in the window read: closed until we fucking say so. The sign reminded Stanton of one person he’d missed. Minutes later Stanton was a few blocks north, climbing the stairs of Monster’s Venice Beach Freak Show, just off the boardwalk. He knocked on the yellow question mark painted on the center of the door. The Freak Show was the closest thing his friend had to a home. “Monster? You in there?”
The entrance cracked open and a porcelain-skinned woman of indeterminate age in striped stockings and a short skirt stood in the entry. The “Electric Lady” had frizzed black hair, supposedly a result of having been struck by lightning as a child. Stanton once saw her light a gas-covered stick with her tongue while sitting in an electric chair. She was also Monster’s girlfriend. Electrifying.
“We’re not supposed to let anyone in here,” she said.
Stanton held the boxes up. “These are for you guys.”
The Freak Show had one main room and a small stage, where performers swallowed swords and stapled dollar bills to their skin. The Electric Lady waved Stanton toward the back and then returned to feeding the largest menagerie of bicephalic animals on the planet. There were “Siamese” turtles, a double-headed albino snake, a two-headed iguana, and a mini-Doberman with five legs. In preserve jars were corpses of a two-headed chicken, a raccoon, and a squirrel.
Stanton found his tattooed friend in the Freak Show’s small accounting office. Clothes were strewn across a small cot in the corner. Monster sat at the desk in front of the old laptop he seemed never to be without.
“Your name’s everywhere, Gabe,” Monster said. “Figured you’d be in Atlanta.”
“I’m stuck here like everyone else.”
“Why are you in Venice? Shouldn’t you be at a lab somewhere?”
“Don’t worry about that.” Stanton held up an eye shield. “Do me a favor and wear one of these. Take some more and pass them out to anyone who doesn’t have one.”
“Thanks,” Monster said. He pulled the straps behind the rings that lined his upper ear and secured the shield. “You believe this shit from city hall?”
“What shit?”
“You haven’t seen it? Broke a few minutes ago. Your name’s mentioned a couple of times even.” He turned the laptop so Stanton could see the screen. “A copy of every internal email from the mayor’s office sent in the eight hours before and after the quarantine decision was made popped up on the Internet. One of the secret-leaking websites. Two million hits already.”
Stanton’s stomach sank as he scanned the news. There were CDC emails to the mayor’s office that described how quickly VFI cases could escalate, offhand questions from within city hall about how many would be dead within the week, and comments about how, given the indestructibility of the prion, public spaces couldn’t be decontaminated and parts of L.A. might never be inhabitable again.
“These are wild guesses at worst-case scenarios,” Stanton said. “Not facts.”
“This is 2012, brother—there ain’t no difference anymore.”
Another article on Monster’s computer suggested Volcy could have crossed the border knowing that he was sick, intentionally spreading VFI here for some political purpose. “That’s ridiculous,” said Stanton.
“Won’t stop people from believing it. There are a lotta crazies who don’t bother with the facts. Not only the 2012ers either. Lots of people are panicked, so be careful out there. Your name’s on these pages, dude.”
Stanton wasn’t worried about himself, but he was afraid of how the public would react when they saw unfi ltered fear from people who were supposed to be in charge. The calm on the streets was fragile, and things could go downhill fast.
“Keep that eye shield on,” Stanton told his friend. “And if you need anything else, you know I’m just down the Walk.”
STANTON OPENED THE DOOR to his condo to find the entire space upended. The living room sofa and the dining room table were turned on their sides and stuffed into the kitchen. Two rugs, rolled into tubes, stood chest-high on their ends in the corners, and every inch of counter space was stacked with his coffee-table books, lamps, and other bric-a-brac. They needed every available surface.
“Honey, is that you?”
He found Alan Davies sitting at a lab bench in the living room. The furniture had been replaced by storage containers, microscopes, and centrifuges. The place reeked of antiseptic solution. They had directly disobeyed orders by setting up this home lab and were only able to sneak out limited equipment. They had to wash and reuse test tubes, beakers, and other glass constantly. On top of the TV console, drying racks held glass equipment waiting for their next round.
“Like what I’ve done with the place?” Davies asked, glancing up from his microscope. Stanton marveled that his partner was still perfectly dressed in a pink tie, white shirt, and blue slacks.
The TV was tuned to CNN: “Travel restrictions for American citizens in eighty-five countries… Bioterrorism explored… mayor’s office emails leaked… YouTube videos show looting at stores in Koreatown and buildings on fire…”
“Jesus,” Stanton said. “There’s looting?”
“Rioting in a moment of tension,” Davies said. “It’s practically a way of life in L.A.”
Stanton headed into his garage. Behind boxes of research journals, Notre Dame memorabilia, and outdated biking equipment was a small safe. Inside he found his self-assembled earthquake/tsunami kit: water-purification tablets, a whistle and signal mirror, a thousand dollars in cash, and a Smith & Wesson 9mm.
Davies stood at the door, peering in. “I always knew you were a Republican.”
Stanton ignored him and checked to make sure the gun was loaded. Then he put it back in the safe. “Where are we with the mice?”
“Antibodies should be ready tomorrow if we’re lucky,” Davies said.
Despite his orders, Stanton couldn’t accept doing nothing to search for a treatment, so they’d set up the secret lab here, away from prying eyes. In the dining room, a dozen cages sat on the wood floor, each containing a knockout mouse.
Only these mice weren’t paired with snakes—they were being exposed to VFI. Stanton’s hope was that they would soon produce antibodies that could fight the disease. It was the same process they’d had some success with in the lab, and ordinarily it would take weeks. But Davies had come up with an inventive way of creating an ultrahigh concentration of purified VFI prion that they could use to spur a reaction more quickly. Several mice had already begun producing.
A loud knock on the front door pulled Stanton up from the cages.
Michaela Thane looked exhausted. Her hair was tousled and her face gaunt. With Presbyterian quarantined and virtually all patients transferred out, doctors were no longer taking shifts. So Stanton had arranged for her to work full-time with his team.
“Glad to see you made it okay,” he said.
“Had to wait at the checkpoint for about a hundred cop cars and fire trucks heading in the opposite direction. I assume they were on their way down to where those jackholes are setting buildings on fire.”
She stepped inside, saw all the equipment, and looked at Stanton as if he were stitching together Frankenstein’s monster.
“We’ll get you an escort on the way back,” Stanton said.
“Tell me you brought my tea,” Davies called. “Please, God, tell me there is some dignity left in this godforsaken world.”
Thane held up a grocery bag. “What the hell is going on in here?”
Davies smiled. “Welcome to the end of our careers.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, Thane was still absorbing the makeshift lab—and the fact that Stanton and Davies were having to do it secretly. “I don’t get it. If we can make antibodies, why won’t the CDC let us try them?”
“They could prompt an allergic response,” Stanton told her. “As much as thirty percent of people can react negatively to them.”
Davies seemed to be inhaling his large mug of PG Tips. “It’ll take years before the FDA approves mouse antibodies as therapy in prion disease.”
Thane said, “But the victims are going to die anyway.”
“It won’t be CDC or FDA who kills them, though,” Stanton said.
“We don’t make the rules,” Davies said. “We just break them. Unfortunately, Deputy Cavanagh is monitoring every move we make, and we’ll have someone looking over our shoulders every time we’re in a patient room.”
“But they won’t be watching me,” said Thane, now understanding why she’d been summoned. “I have patients in the ICU still. I could still get in there.”
Merely setting up this lab could get all of their medical licenses suspended, but a helo-medic knew all about taking chances for her patients.
Stanton had watched Thane interact with her patients and with the other staff. He sensed he could trust her.
“You can’t tell a soul,” Davies told her. “Believe me when I tell you I wouldn’t fare well in an American prison.”
“The test can be any group of patients we can access, right?” she asked.
“As long as they haven’t progressed too far,” Stanton told her. “Once the disease goes beyond two or three days, nothing will work.”
“Then I have one condition.”
“We all have it,” Davies said. “I believe the medical term is professional suicide.”
Stanton looked at Thane. “What’s your one condition?”
SIXTEEN
THE GETTY DOUBLED THEIR SECURITY TEAM AS LOOTING AND ARSON spread across the city. The Baghdad Museum had lost irreplaceable treasures during its siege in 2003, and no one wanted to see that happen if L.A. really fell apart. Fortunately, the Getty was perched in the Santa Monica Mountains, almost a thousand feet above the 405 freeway, and the only way up was through the security gates at the bottom of the hill.
So the museum where Chel and her team had been holed up for two days was one of the safest places in the city.
Chel was more worried about the safety of the local indígenas. According to the news on the TV she’d carted into the lab, 2012 New Agers and Apocalypticists were convening across the city, in violation of the mandate to stay home. Before VFI, “Believer” gatherings focused on renewed consciousness or apocalypse readiness; CNN now claimed that many meetings had taken a different tone in the shadow of the quarantine. People were desperate, and searching for scapegoats. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that right before 12/21 a Maya man had brought this disease to America.
In Century City, local indígenas had been threatened and their homes had been vandalized with graffiti. In East L.A., one man brutally attacked his Maya neighbor following an argument about the end of the Long Count cycle. The elderly Honduran was in a coma from the beating. So now Fraternidad leaders had decided that the city’s indígenas needed a place to congregate for mutual protection. The archbishop had offered them shelter, and there were more than 160 Maya living indefinitely at Our Lady of the Angels.
Chel’s mother wasn’t among them. “They say we’re supposed to stay home to keep from getting sick,” she’d replied when Chel called to urge her to join the others at the cathedral. Ha’ana’s factory had closed, and she hadn’t left her bungalow in West Hollywood, declaring she was staying put.
“There’s a doctor checking people for VFI before they let anyone through the doors, Mom. The church is the safest place you can be right now.”
“I’ve lived in this house thirty-three years, and no one has ever bothered me.”
“Then just do it for me,” said Chel.
“And where will you be?”
“At work. I have no choice. There’s a project that’s extremely time sensitive. It’s totally safe here with the museum in lockdown mode.”
“Only you’d be working now, Chel. How long are you going to stay there?”
Chel had gone home and packed a suitcase full of clothes. She’d be here for as long as it took. “I’d feel a lot better knowing you were at the church, Mom.”
Neither woman was satisfied when they hung up, and Chel allowed herself a frustrated smoke break by the Getty’s reflecting pool. There, her phone alerted her to an incoming email from Stanton. His red exclamation point seemed a little superfluous, under the circumstances. All the message said was:
anything?
She started typing a long response, explaining where they were in the decipherment, but thought better of it midway through. He didn’t need a thousand unnecessary details. He had enough details of his own to worry about.
Progress on the translation. No location yet. Won’t stop till we do.
Without thinking, she added, How are you? and sent it off, then immediately felt absurd. It was a ridiculous question to ask the man in charge of the disease investigation. She knew exactly how he was.
But, to her surprise, she had a response within seconds:
working hard to keep up. please keep me posted. take care. need you and your team healthy. call if there’s anything you need. Gabe
It didn’t say much, but something about it was both calming and empowering for Chel. Maybe he was starting to see her as part of the solution to this crisis. Maybe she would be. She stubbed out her cigarette and went back inside.
Rolando was carefully tweezing more tiny fragments of the codex onto the reconstruction table. They’d gotten everything out of the box and taken a complete set of photographs of every piece of the manuscript so they would have it in perpetuity. And once they’d made their breakthrough on the father– son glyph pair, Chel, Rolando, and Victor had reconstructed the first eight pages of the codex.
Even with most of the document still left to reconstruct and decipher, they knew that their findings would change Maya scholarship forever.
So much more than just the personal thoughts of a scribe, Paktul’s codex was a political protest—an indictment of a king’s rule and an unprecedented questioning of a god. Chel took comfort in the fact that, no matter what happened to her or her career, the world would eventually see this strange gift of history. It was the work of a moral, learned man willing to risk his own life for what he believed in, which illustrated beyond a doubt the humanity of her ancestors.
But there was still a more pressing issue: finding out where the codex was written, so they could help the CDC identify the source of the disease. Neither Chel nor anyone else in her lab had ever heard the name before, but the scribe called his home Kanuataba and referred to it several times as the terraced city. Terracing was an agricultural practice whereby the ancients created new patches of farmable land by cutting stairlike plots into the sides of hills. But the practice was used all over the Maya empire, so without more detail, the name gave little evidence of the city’s location.
“Anything come up in the databases about Akabalam?” Rolando asked.
Chel shook her head. “Sent it to Yasee at Berkeley and Francis at Tulane too,” she said. “But they had no idea.”
Rolando ran a hand through his hair. “By the end, the glyph appears on almost every one of the fragments. I still don’t get what it could be.”
They had never seen such a proliferation of glyphs referring to one god in any of the literature. Understanding its significance would be crucial to completing the translation.
“It’s not a question of syntax, like the father–son combination,” Rolando said. “It’s more like Paktul is dedicating the final pages to him.”
Chel nodded. “Like adonai in the Jewish Torah, used to mean both God and Praise God.”
“But there are fragments where it seems like the scribe is negative about Akabalam,” Rolando said. “Wouldn’t it be heresy for a scribe to openly resent a god?”
“The whole book is heresy. The first glyph block indicts his king. That alone would’ve been punishable by death.”
“So we’ll keep searching. In the meantime, should we talk about page seven?”
“What about it?”
Rolando turned to the section in question and said sheepishly, “I guess I’m curious what you make of the thirteenth-cycle reference.”
And the dying man’s words were heard by those of us above the fray, and they were an omen of things to come, as black as the end of the thirteenth cycle.
Chel sat down. The five-thousand-plus-year Long Count was divided into major periods of about 395 years each, beginning on a mythical creation date of 0.0.0.0.0, the equivalent of August 11th, 3114 B.C. in the Gregorian calendar. In the Long Count, a day was expressed by 0.0.0.0.1, a year by 0.0.1.0.0, and the important 395-year periods by 1.0.0.0.0. 12/21/12—in the Maya calendar 13.0.0.0.0—would mark the end of the all-important “thirteenth cycle,” at which point the last Long Count had supposedly come to an end. Just one reference in the Popal Vuh and one short inscription at the ruins of Tortuguero, Mexico—IT WILL BE COMPLETED IN THE 13TH CYCLE—had spawned a cottage industry and cultish devotion to the calendar, and the 2012ers, already empowered by VFI, would go out of control if they knew there was now a second reference, from the classical era, let alone one whose appearance was inextricably tied to the epidemic.
Chel glanced over at the door of the lab, next to which an intercom hung on the wall. It could be used to summon the security detail stationed at the bottom of the hill. She hoped never to have to use it.
“He could be talking about a Tzolk’in cycle of thirteen days for all we know,” she told Rolando. “It might not have anything to do with the Long Count.” Chel wasn’t sure if she believed it herself, but she couldn’t let 2012 distract her now, nor would she give the Believers anything to hang on to.
One of the Believers she had in mind walked into the lab and caught the tail end of their conversation. Victor’s short white hair was combed back and wet, as if he’d just showered, his perpetual polo shirt green this time.
“Please continue,” he said.
Even at Victor’s lowest points, Chel had always marveled at his seventy- something energy. When she was in graduate school, he’d do decipherment work for twelve-hour stretches without ever eating or going to the bathroom, and now he’d been instrumental in getting them this far.
Still, as grateful as Chel was, she wasn’t eager to bring up 2012 when he was around.
“The thirteenth-cycle reference is up for interpretation,” Victor said, jumping right in.
“I guess it is,” she responded warily.
“I’ll check the computers,” Rolando said, taking his cue to leave.
Victor went on, “But there are many things that will be up for interpretation, depending on people’s particular biases. And I believe we have other more important things to focus on. Don’t you?”
Chel was relieved. “I do, Victor. Thank you.”
He held up his copy of the translation. “Good, then,” he said. “Let us do that.” He put a hand gently on Chel’s shoulder, and she reached up to meet it with her own for a moment. “I think the first things we must discuss are the implications for the collapse, right?”
“What implications?”
“The possibility this book could tell us something about the collapse we aren’t prepared for,” he said. “What do you see in Paktul’s discussion of the failing city?”
“I see a community stricken by a mega-drought, trying to survive. Paktul says there are barren markets and starving children. The drought must have been going on for at least eighteen months, based on the likely water stores.”
“We know there were droughts,” Victor said. “But what about the reference to the food-preservation techniques they’re using?”
Our army has a new way to preserve food, salting its supplies more heavily than before, so that we may launch wars on lands even more distant.
“What about it?” Chel asked.
“Heavier salting is a major innovation in warfare,” Victor said. “You know war between the polities was often hampered by food supply. Figuring out better salting techniques would have let them fight more effectively.”
“What are you implying?”
“I’m just saying, the ability to wage more war ultimately made them more vulnerable.”
“To what?”
“To everything.”
Now she understood. Victor had made this argument forever, even before his 2012 hysteria: He believed her ancestors were better suited to simpler, more rural lives, and that the cities—for all their glory—fostered the self-destructive excesses of despotic kings. “The ancients could have ruled for a millennium if it weren’t for the droughts,” she said. “They used their technology to great advantage.”
Victor disagreed. “Let us not forget that the Maya have endured much longer droughts living in the forests than they ever did in the cities. Once they moved back into the jungle after the classic and stopped building temples and waging more wars and burning all their wood for plaster, they survived the dry periods just fine.”
“So the noble savages could only survive in the jungles? They couldn’t handle the pressures of civilization?”
Before Victor could respond, Rolando poked his head back into the lab. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s something you both need to see.”
IN THE REAR OF THE LAB, they had four computers using state-of-the-art “vision” programs to decipher unknown glyphs and piece together gaps in the text. Due to the unique styles of scribes, even familiar words could be painted in a way that made them unrecognizable. Computer vision used sophisticated algorithms to calculate distances between brush-
strokes and then tried to match them to known glyphs with similar shapes, with much greater accuracy than the human eye.
Rolando pointed to a series of faint squiggly lines from the codex. “You see this glyph? The computer believes it’s similar enough to one of the representations of Scorpio seen at Copal to be a match. I think this is a zodiac reference.”
The sun and stars determined every event in ancient life: gods worshipped, names given to children, rituals performed, foods eaten, and sacrifices offered. The ancient people studied and worshipped many of the same constellations the ancient Greeks and Chinese did. No one knew whether the Maya zodiac came about independently or was brought across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia into the Americas, but, either way, the parallels were striking.
“So if we substitute that interpretation into the text,” Rolando continued, “this sentence would read: The morning star passed through the reddest part of the great scorpion in the sky.”
Chel saw it instantly. “We could try to recreate Venus’s position in the sky at the time when Paktul was writing.”
“I have to assume there are more zodiac references in the text,” said Rolando. “I’ve got the computer searching for anything else resembling constellations.”
“We need an expert in archaeoastronomy,” Victor interjected.
“Doesn’t Patrick work with the zodiac sometimes?”
Chel’s stomach clenched.
“Do we even know if he’s around?” Rolando asked.
She knew, of course. Patrick had emailed when the quarantine began to see if she was okay. To let her know he was here if she needed anything. She hadn’t even responded.
SEVENTEEN
My scarlet feathers are striped blue and yellow. When I came here, I was starving and might have died if he had not saved me. I was on my migration and lost my flock when we passed through Kanuataba and only the scribe gave me life. I ate ground worms he pulled from the dirt. It has been so long since the rains, even the ground worms are shriveled and dry, but we give each other comfort.
* * *
I, Paktul, royal scribe of Kanuataba, am buoyed by the presence of a scarlet macaw, who has flown into my cave. My spirit form given to me at birth was a macaw, and the bird has always been a great omen when I have chanced upon one. The night of Auxila’s murder, it arrived wounded. I gave it worms because there are no fruit seeds to offer, then let drops of blood out of my tongue to welcome it. Through this, we became one. I embody the spirit of the bird in my dreams. Now I am as grateful for his presence as he is for mine. It is not often a spirit animal finds his man in the flesh, and it is the only happiness I know now.
For there has been no rain but in our dreams, and the people of Kanuataba grow hungrier by the day. Maize and beans and peppers are almost as rare as meat, and the people have taken to feeding on shrubs. I have given my rations to the children of my friends, for I am used to subsistence eating in my communes with the gods, and my appetite has grown small.
The death of Auxila, just twelve suns ago, still haunts me. Auxila was a good man, a holy man, whose father took me in when I was a boy and without parents. I knew only my father, my mother having died when she pushed me from the womb. My father could not handle a boy on his own, but he was not allowed by the king, Jaguar Imix’s father, to take another wife from Kanuataba. So he fled alone to the great lake beside the ocean, the land of our ancestors, to rejoin them, as soon the bird will rejoin its flock. He never returned, and Auxila’s father took me in as an orphan and made Auxila my brother. Now my brother has been killed by the king I serve.
I headed to the palace with my macaw, on a day when the moon was halved, and the evening star would pass directly through Xibalba. I swallowed my sadness at Auxila’s death, for to express discontent at a royal decree is unwise. I had been summoned to the king for reasons I did not know.
The macaw and I passed other nobles standing in the central patio on our way to the palace. Maruva, a member of the council who has never had an idea of his own, leaned against one of the great pillars encircling the patio, dwarfed by the stone that reached seven men high. He spoke to a king’s ambassador well known for supplying the black market in the Outskirts with hallucinogens. They both looked at me suspiciously and whispered as I passed.
I reached the palace and was led by one of the guards into the king’s quarters. The king and his minions had just finished eating, another secret ritual in which only he and his sycophants are allowed. These men were finishing a royal feast. The smell of incense filled my nostrils and overwhelmed the smell of animal flesh. The incense was distinctive. I have come upon the end of these royal feasts before, and always there is a bitter smell in the air from the fire they burn to sanctify their meal. The secret mix of plants burned is a source of power for kings, the aroma of the incense a great source of pride for Jaguar Imix. When I set the macaw down and kissed the wretched limestone, the aroma had changed, and I could no longer taste it on the back of my tongue as I once had.
Jaguar Imix called me into the recesses of the chamber, ordering me to sit on the floor beneath his royal throne, where the sun shines at solstice and the moon shines when harvest comes. Jaguar Imix’s face is sharp, and he has always garnered power from its distinction. His nose is pointed like a bird’s, and his flat forehead is offered as evidence of his divine power. He drapes himself in cotton, made on the royal looms and dyed royal green, and he is almost never seen without his jaguar head covering.
Jaguar Imix, the holy ruler, spoke. His voice bellowed for all to hear:
—We will honor the great god Akabalam and the many gifts he has provided my sovereign kingdom. Let us praise him! To you, Akabalam, we shall dedicate a holy feast we prepare, and to you we make this most insignificant offering, that you may bless us with your many gifts. We shall prepare for a feast of meat unlike any the city has ever seen before, for all the inhabitants of Kanuataba. It will be made in honor of Akabalam to sanctify the commencement of the new pyramid.—
I was confused. Of what feast did he speak? And from where would food for such a feast come when our city is starving?
I spoke:
—Pardon, Highness, but there is to be a holy feast?—
—Like none the city has seen in a hundred turns of the Calendar Round.—
—What kind of feast?—
—All will be told in time, scribe.—
Jaguar Imix pointed at a concubine who had come to join us, and she reached into a small bowl beside her and pulled out a length of tree skin. She placed it between her master’s teeth and he chewed as he spoke again:
—Paktul, servant, while in a trance I was told by the gods of your disapproval of the new temple. Your questioning of the feast ordained by Akabalam confirms what the gods have told me. You know that I see all, scribe. Is it true what the gods say? That you would dispute that I am their vessel?—
These words were as good as a sentence of death, and I feared as I have never feared before—the eyes of the court were on me, preparing for blood. Even the macaw who sat in his cage beside me could feel it. Auxila had been sacrificed for less. My heart would be ripped out on the altar! I looked over at Jacomo the dwarf, slurping from a cup of chocolate with cinnamon and chili. I knew then there was no god behind this, just a malicious dwarf.
With fear in my heart, I spoke:
—Jaguar Imix, most holy ruler, exalted one, I spoke in the council meeting only to ask if the time to construct the new pyramid was ideal. I wish for the pyramid to stand for ten great cycles, so that your name may be remembered forever as the most holy. I hope to adorn the façade with a thousand glyphs to represent you, but I do not wish to paint on poor limestone because we do not have the men or materials to build it.—
I bowed my head in penitence, and at this, Jaguar Imix spit the skin of the tree from his mouth onto the ground and flashed his teeth. He showed the most beautiful set of jade and pearl inlays ever created in Kanuataba. Jaguar Imix loves to smile and remind everyone below him of his prize. Loyalty is Jaguar Imix’s greatest demand of his people, and so many times I have seen him revel in the groveling of a man, only to have him executed before another turn of the great star above.
I closed my eyes and waited for the executioners to come. They would take me to the top of the pyramid and sacrifice me as they did Auxila.
But then the king spoke:
—Paktul, low one, you are forgiven. I pardon your indiscretion and trust that you will redeem yourself in the preparation for the holy feast to honor Akabalam.—
I opened my eyes and could not believe the words. And the king continued:
—My son, the prince, favors you, and so you shall be forgiven this trespass once, so you may teach Smoke Song to follow in the bloodline of his destiny. You will teach him of the power of Akabalam, most revered god who has revealed himself to me. You will instruct Smoke Song in the virtues of the coming feast.—
Trembling, I choked out words:
—Highness, I have searched the great books, and I have not found this Akabalam. I have searched everywhere, and there are no descriptions of him in the great cycles of time. I wish to teach the prince, but from what shall I teach him?—
—You shall continue in your lessons to the prince as planned, low scribe, from the great books you know so well. And when the feast in honor of Akabalam is prepared, I shall reveal all to you so that you may record it in new holy books, so Smoke Song and the divine kings that shall come after him will know forevermore.—
I departed the royal chambers, dizzy with the new life the king had breathed into me.
The holy prince’s lessons are more important than any other charge and had saved my own life from sacrifice. I tried to bury my worries as I went to the palace library to meet the prince, with only the bird in its cage, embodiment of my spirit, to share in my fears.
The royal library, where I teach the prince his lessons, is the most wondrous place in all of our great terraced city. There I have stood beneath the tree of knowledge that the wise men have gathered over ten great turns of the Calendar Round. There are books of every description, read for their holy wisdom. These books give the religious knowledge of the astronomers, who told of the celestial world as the two-headed serpent.
I stepped into the library, a room of stone draped in fabrics dyed with the most royal of blues. The square window in the stone shines white light on the fabric; at dawn on the summer solstice, the sun shines directly in to signify dawn for the passions of learning, which our ancestors brought into the world. There are shelves on which sit the great books, stacks of them, some unfolded, from a time when fig-bark paper was plentiful and no scribe would ever have to steal to paint this book.
Over a thousand suns past, the king entrusted me to teach the royal prince the wisdom of our ancestors, and to help him understand about time, the never-ending loop that bends back on itself. Only by looking to our pasts can we dream of our futures.
Smoke Song, the prince, is a strong boy of twelve turns of the full Calendar Round, with the eyes and nose of the king, his father. But he is not vengeful, and when I came to the library carrying the bird, Smoke Song was concerned.
He spoke:
—I have seen the sacrifice of Auxila, teacher. And in the plaza I saw his daughter, Flamed Plume, whom I favor, mourning her father. Can you tell me where she is now?—
I looked to Kawil, Prince Smoke Song’s servant, who always stood waiting for the prince during our lessons. Kawil is a good servant and very tall. He stayed silent and only stared ahead.
It was too painful to explain what would happen to the girls, daughters of Auxila, so I said simply:
—Yes, Prince, she survives, but you must put Flamed Plume out of your mind, for she is untouchable to you. You must focus on your studies.—
The boy seemed sad, but he pointed at the macaw and spoke:
—What is this, teacher? What do you bring me?—
My spirit animal is most sociable, and so I let him out of his cage to show the prince. As we reviewed his knowledge of spirit animals, I explained that mine came to me in the form of this macaw and that I had become one with the bird through the drops of my blood. Then the bird, my animal form, flew about the room, which pleased the boy to see. We flew to the roof and back down; we circled him and landed on his shoulder.
I told the prince my spirit animal had stopped in Kanuataba on the great path of migration every macaw makes with its flock. I told him that in a few weeks we would continue our journey in search of the land that our ancestor birds have returned to every harvest season for thousands of years.
I told the prince:
—Every man must transcend the everyday human world, and the animal self is the embodiment of that ideal.—
Smoke Song’s animal self is a jaguar, as befi ts all future kings. I watched him taking in the bird, considering how the macaw could be my bridge to the overworld. I mourn that Smoke Song might never again see his spirit animal. Few holy jaguars roam the land anymore.
When we finished talking of animal spirits, the boy spoke:
—Wise teacher, my father the king has told me that I may accompany the army on their journey to fight on behalf of the people of Kanuataba. That we may go to Sakamil, Ixtachal, and Laranam and fight them as decreed by the morning star passing into darkness. It will be a great evening-star war. Are you not proud, wise teacher?—
Anger swelled up inside me, and I let go words that could have cost me my life:
—Have you been to the streets and to the barren markets, stricken by drought? It is difficult to witness, Prince, but you see the suffering of the people with your own eyes. Even the army is starving, whatever salting techniques they may have now. We can hardly afford to wage wars in distant lands!—
But the boy snapped back:
—My father has received a divination that we must wage the star war against the distant kingdoms! How can you know better than the stars? We will fight as our gods have commanded! I will fight with the warriors of Kanuataba!—
I looked at the child with a pained heart and spoke:
—Fire ripples through the heart of every man of Kanuataba, Prince. But one day you must lead us, and you must prove your wits. You are in the midst of your studies. I was not brought here to train you as a warrior with a blowgun or length of rope, so that you may die on the warpath!—
The prince ran from the library, hiding the tears that poured from his eyes. I called after him, but he did not return.
I expected the boy’s servant, Kawil, to follow the prince quickly, but to my surprise he did not move. Instead, he spoke:
—I will bring him back to you, scribe.—
—Go, then.—
—May I speak first, holy scribe? It concerns Auxila.—
I gave the servant permission.
Kawil told me he was sitting outside the palace walls, several nights after Auxila’s sacrifice, and that he had seen Haniba, the wife of Auxila, with her two daughters.
He explained:
—They had come to worship at the altar where Auxila was sacrificed.—
I was shocked to hear this. Every woman knows what she must do when her husband is sacrificed at the altar. Haniba had insulted the gods by failing to do her duty. Kawil explained that he followed her all the way to the Outskirts, where she was living.
Now there was no question in my mind what I had to do.
Someone had to remind Auxila’s wife of her duty. It is decreed by Itzamnaaj for all of our history that the wives of sacrificed nobles are to join their husbands in the overworld by an honorable suicide. Auxila was my close friend, my brother, and his wife deserved better than the horrors of the Outskirts.
If she would not heed the call of the gods, I would have to help her.
* * *
When the morning star passed through the reddest part of the great scorpion in the sky once more, I dressed in a commoner’s loincloth and leather sandals so as not to be recognized.
The Outskirts shelter the dregs of Kanuataba, where men and women have been saved from death by omens but exiled from the city proper for their crimes. Here were thieves and adulterers who had escaped death by an eclipse, errant borrowers who lived only by the grace of the evening star, drug addicts, and even those we are told are the greatest sinners of all, bound to walk the earth for all eternity from the north to the south: those who stupidly worship only those deities who they believe favor them.
No limestone or marble is wasted on the buildings in the Outskirts, and if any of the quarrymen are caught sneaking limestone, they are guaranteed a public death, so the buildings are made of mud and thatch. There are only the illegal trades—the market for dream mushrooms, gambling on ball court games, and whoring.
I had obscured my face with my blotting towel, which I use to prepare the gesso for books. In the palm of my hand I carried several cacao beans and doled out each one as I spoke with women in the streets who might be able to guide me to Haniba. These women all offered me their bodies in exchange for the bean and were utterly confused when I refused them. Instead, I spoke with an old whore. She sent me another two hundred paces down the causeway to a series of stalls, which I had not seen since I was in the Outskirts as a young boy, where I lost my own virginity.
In the back of one of the stalls, I heard a woman moaning. I went around and found a man on top of Haniba, a vile man thrusting himself into her. Haniba was defiling herself! There were four cacao shells laid neatly on the ground beside them, and in the midst of their copulation they could not hear as I leaned down to check the beans. I found no beans inside two of the shells. The man was a cheat.
I picked up a large sitting stone in the corner of the stall and raised it above my head. I bore down with all my might. The man slumped on top of Auxila’s wife and she screamed, not understanding. I believe she thought the stone had come down from Iztamnaaj himself to punish her for her trespasses. But when I lifted the man off her and she saw my face, she turned away. Haniba was deeply ashamed. Yet there could be no deeper shame before the gods than that she was still living on this earth.
She spoke:
—They have taken everything from me, Paktul, my house, all of my clothing, and Auxila’s goods—
—I know why you are here, and I am come to implore you, Haniba. You must act prudently. Your children starve because no one will take them until you are gone. People will learn you are still alive—
The woman wept, barely able to breathe:
—I cannot heed the order until I know my children are safe. Flamed Plume is turning to the age where she will be taken up by some old man who wishes to have a fresh girl! You have seen the way Prince Smoke Song himself looks at my Flamed Plume—she might have been queen, Paktul! The king was considering their betrothal, and the prince is good, deserving of her. But now that her father has been shamed, we all know they cannot be betrothed. So what good man will take Flamed Plume? Surely you understand, Paktul. Surely this shame is like the shame you felt when your father left you!—
I was tempted to strike her for speaking this way. But when I saw the look of sadness in her eyes, I could not hit this woman I had known since Auxila and I were boys together.
I spoke:
—You must find yourself a length of vine and wrap it around your neck by the turn of the next sun. You must hang yourself proudly, Haniba, to fulfill your duties as wife of a noble sacrificed to the gods—
—But he was not sacrificed to the gods, Paktul! He was murdered by a king! Jaguar Imix ordained his death because Auxila had the courage to speak out against him, and the king sacrificed him in the name of a god that does not exist! This god, Akabalam, surely cannot have called for Auxila’s sacrifice, having never revealed his power to us or to any other noble in a dream!—
I said nothing of my own doubts about the new god. For just as a scribe should not question a divination, it is not for a widow to question a king.
I spoke:
—What can you know of the conversation between a king and a counselor he sacrifices? How can you know the king never revealed Akabalam?—
Haniba buried her head in her hands.
As a nobleman, seeing such a woman make such a transgression against the gods, my duty was to kill her.
But I was powerless in the face of her sadness.
My scarlet feathers are striped blue and yellow. When I came here, I was starving and might have died if he had not saved me. I was on my migration and lost my flock when we passed through Kanuataba and only the scribe gave me life. I ate ground worms he pulled from the dirt. It has been so long since the rains, even the ground worms are shriveled and dry, but we give each other comfort.
I, Paktul, royal scribe of Kanuataba, am buoyed by the presence of a scarlet macaw, who has flown into my cave. My spirit form given to me at birth was a macaw, and the bird has always been a great omen when I have chanced upon one. The night of Auxila’s murder, it arrived wounded. I gave it worms because there are no fruit seeds to offer, then let drops of blood out of my tongue to welcome it. Through this, we became one. I embody the spirit of the bird in my dreams. Now I am as grateful for his presence as he is for mine. It is not often a spirit animal finds his man in the flesh, and it is the only happiness I know now.
For there has been no rain but in our dreams, and the people of Kanuataba grow hungrier by the day. Maize and beans and peppers are almost as rare as meat, and the people have taken to feeding on shrubs. I have given my rations to the children of my friends, for I am used to subsistence eating in my communes with the gods, and my appetite has grown small.
The death of Auxila, just twelve suns ago, still haunts me. Auxila was a good man, a holy man, whose father took me in when I was a boy and without parents. I knew only my father, my mother having died when she pushed me from the womb. My father could not handle a boy on his own, but he was not allowed by the king, Jaguar Imix’s father, to take another wife from Kanuataba. So he fled alone to the great lake beside the ocean, the land of our ancestors, to rejoin them, as soon the bird will rejoin its flock. He never returned, and Auxila’s father took me in as an orphan and made Auxila my brother. Now my brother has been killed by the king I serve.
I headed to the palace with my macaw, on a day when the moon was halved, and the evening star would pass directly through Xibalba. I swallowed my sadness at Auxila’s death, for to express discontent at a royal decree is unwise. I had been summoned to the king for reasons I did not know.
The macaw and I passed other nobles standing in the central patio on our way to the palace. Maruva, a member of the council who has never had an idea of his own, leaned against one of the great pillars encircling the patio, dwarfed by the stone that reached seven men high. He spoke to a king’s ambassador well known for supplying the black market in the Outskirts with hallucinogens. They both looked at me suspiciously and whispered as I passed.
I reached the palace and was led by one of the guards into the king’s quarters. The king and his minions had just finished eating, another secret ritual in which only he and his sycophants are allowed. These men were finishing a royal feast. The smell of incense filled my nostrils and overwhelmed the smell of animal flesh. The incense was distinctive. I have come upon the end of these royal feasts before, and always there is a bitter smell in the air from the fire they burn to sanctify their meal. The secret mix of plants burned is a source of power for kings, the aroma of the incense a great source of pride for Jaguar Imix. When I set the macaw down and kissed the wretched limestone, the aroma had changed, and I could no longer taste it on the back of my tongue as I once had.
Jaguar Imix called me into the recesses of the chamber, ordering me to sit on the floor beneath his royal throne, where the sun shines at solstice and the moon shines when harvest comes. Jaguar Imix’s face is sharp, and he has always garnered power from its distinction. His nose is pointed like a bird’s, and his flat forehead is offered as evidence of his divine power. He drapes himself in cotton, made on the royal looms and dyed royal green, and he is almost never seen without his jaguar head covering.
Jaguar Imix, the holy ruler, spoke. His voice bellowed for all to hear:
—We will honor the great god Akabalam and the many gifts he has provided my sovereign kingdom. Let us praise him! To you, Akabalam, we shall dedicate a holy feast we prepare, and to you we make this most insignificant offering, that you may bless us with your many gifts. We shall prepare for a feast of meat unlike any the city has ever seen before, for all the inhabitants of Kanuataba. It will be made in honor of Akabalam to sanctify the commencement of the new pyramid.—
I was confused. Of what feast did he speak? And from where would food for such a feast come when our city is starving?
I spoke:
—Pardon, Highness, but there is to be a holy feast?—
—Like none the city has seen in a hundred turns of the Calendar Round.—
—What kind of feast?—
—All will be told in time, scribe.—
Jaguar Imix pointed at a concubine who had come to join us, and she reached into a small bowl beside her and pulled out a length of tree skin. She placed it between her master’s teeth and he chewed as he spoke again:
—Paktul, servant, while in a trance I was told by the gods of your disapproval of the new temple. Your questioning of the feast ordained by Akabalam confirms what the gods have told me. You know that I see all, scribe. Is it true what the gods say? That you would dispute that I am their vessel?—
These words were as good as a sentence of death, and I feared as I have never feared before—the eyes of the court were on me, preparing for blood. Even the macaw who sat in his cage beside me could feel it. Auxila had been sacrificed for less. My heart would be ripped out on the altar! I looked over at Jacomo the dwarf, slurping from a cup of chocolate with cinnamon and chili. I knew then there was no god behind this, just a malicious dwarf.
With fear in my heart, I spoke:
—Jaguar Imix, most holy ruler, exalted one, I spoke in the council meeting only to ask if the time to construct the new pyramid was ideal. I wish for the pyramid to stand for ten great cycles, so that your name may be remembered forever as the most holy. I hope to adorn the façade with a thousand glyphs to represent you, but I do not wish to paint on poor limestone because we do not have the men or materials to build it.—
I bowed my head in penitence, and at this, Jaguar Imix spit the skin of the tree from his mouth onto the ground and flashed his teeth. He showed the most beautiful set of jade and pearl inlays ever created in Kanuataba. Jaguar Imix loves to smile and remind everyone below him of his prize. Loyalty is Jaguar Imix’s greatest demand of his people, and so many times I have seen him revel in the groveling of a man, only to have him executed before another turn of the great star above.
I closed my eyes and waited for the executioners to come. They would take me to the top of the pyramid and sacrifice me as they did Auxila.
But then the king spoke:
—Paktul, low one, you are forgiven. I pardon your indiscretion and trust that you will redeem yourself in the preparation for the holy feast to honor Akabalam.—
I opened my eyes and could not believe the words. And the king continued:
—My son, the prince, favors you, and so you shall be forgiven this trespass once, so you may teach Smoke Song to follow in the bloodline of his destiny. You will teach him of the power of Akabalam, most revered god who has revealed himself to me. You will instruct Smoke Song in the virtues of the coming feast.—
Trembling, I choked out words:
—Highness, I have searched the great books, and I have not found this Akabalam. I have searched everywhere, and there are no descriptions of him in the great cycles of time. I wish to teach the prince, but from what shall I teach him?—
—You shall continue in your lessons to the prince as planned, low scribe, from the great books you know so well. And when the feast in honor of Akabalam is prepared, I shall reveal all to you so that you may record it in new holy books, so Smoke Song and the divine kings that shall come after him will know forevermore.—
I departed the royal chambers, dizzy with the new life the king had breathed into me.
The holy prince’s lessons are more important than any other charge and had saved my own life from sacrifice. I tried to bury my worries as I went to the palace library to meet the prince, with only the bird in its cage, embodiment of my spirit, to share in my fears.
The royal library, where I teach the prince his lessons, is the most wondrous place in all of our great terraced city. There I have stood beneath the tree of knowledge that the wise men have gathered over ten great turns of the Calendar Round. There are books of every description, read for their holy wisdom. These books give the religious knowledge of the astronomers, who told of the celestial world as the two-headed serpent.
I stepped into the library, a room of stone draped in fabrics dyed with the most royal of blues. The square window in the stone shines white light on the fabric; at dawn on the summer solstice, the sun shines directly in to signify dawn for the passions of learning, which our ancestors brought into the world. There are shelves on which sit the great books, stacks of them, some unfolded, from a time when fig-bark paper was plentiful and no scribe would ever have to steal to paint this book.
Over a thousand suns past, the king entrusted me to teach the royal prince the wisdom of our ancestors, and to help him understand about time, the never-ending loop that bends back on itself. Only by looking to our pasts can we dream of our futures.
Smoke Song, the prince, is a strong boy of twelve turns of the full Calendar Round, with the eyes and nose of the king, his father. But he is not vengeful, and when I came to the library carrying the bird, Smoke Song was concerned.
He spoke:
—I have seen the sacrifice of Auxila, teacher. And in the plaza I saw his daughter, Flamed Plume, whom I favor, mourning her father. Can you tell me where she is now?—
I looked to Kawil, Prince Smoke Song’s servant, who always stood waiting for the prince during our lessons. Kawil is a good servant and very tall. He stayed silent and only stared ahead.
It was too painful to explain what would happen to the girls, daughters of Auxila, so I said simply:
—Yes, Prince, she survives, but you must put Flamed Plume out of your mind, for she is untouchable to you. You must focus on your studies.—
The boy seemed sad, but he pointed at the macaw and spoke:
—What is this, teacher? What do you bring me?—
My spirit animal is most sociable, and so I let him out of his cage to show the prince. As we reviewed his knowledge of spirit animals, I explained that mine came to me in the form of this macaw and that I had become one with the bird through the drops of my blood. Then the bird, my animal form, flew about the room, which pleased the boy to see. We flew to the roof and back down; we circled him and landed on his shoulder.
I told the prince my spirit animal had stopped in Kanuataba on the great path of migration every macaw makes with its flock. I told him that in a few weeks we would continue our journey in search of the land that our ancestor birds have returned to every harvest season for thousands of years.
I told the prince:
—Every man must transcend the everyday human world, and the animal self is the embodiment of that ideal.—
Smoke Song’s animal self is a jaguar, as befi ts all future kings. I watched him taking in the bird, considering how the macaw could be my bridge to the overworld. I mourn that Smoke Song might never again see his spirit animal. Few holy jaguars roam the land anymore.
When we finished talking of animal spirits, the boy spoke:
—Wise teacher, my father the king has told me that I may accompany the army on their journey to fight on behalf of the people of Kanuataba. That we may go to Sakamil, Ixtachal, and Laranam and fight them as decreed by the morning star passing into darkness. It will be a great evening-star war. Are you not proud, wise teacher?—
Anger swelled up inside me, and I let go words that could have cost me my life:
—Have you been to the streets and to the barren markets, stricken by drought? It is difficult to witness, Prince, but you see the suffering of the people with your own eyes. Even the army is starving, whatever salting techniques they may have now. We can hardly afford to wage wars in distant lands!—
But the boy snapped back:
—My father has received a divination that we must wage the star war against the distant kingdoms! How can you know better than the stars? We will fight as our gods have commanded! I will fight with the warriors of Kanuataba!—
I looked at the child with a pained heart and spoke:
—Fire ripples through the heart of every man of Kanuataba, Prince. But one day you must lead us, and you must prove your wits. You are in the midst of your studies. I was not brought here to train you as a warrior with a blowgun or length of rope, so that you may die on the warpath!—
The prince ran from the library, hiding the tears that poured from his eyes. I called after him, but he did not return.
I expected the boy’s servant, Kawil, to follow the prince quickly, but to my surprise he did not move. Instead, he spoke:
—I will bring him back to you, scribe.—
—Go, then.—
—May I speak first, holy scribe? It concerns Auxila.—
I gave the servant permission.
Kawil told me he was sitting outside the palace walls, several nights after Auxila’s sacrifice, and that he had seen Haniba, the wife of Auxila, with her two daughters.
He explained:
—They had come to worship at the altar where Auxila was sacrificed.—
I was shocked to hear this. Every woman knows what she must do when her husband is sacrificed at the altar. Haniba had insulted the gods by failing to do her duty. Kawil explained that he followed her all the way to the Outskirts, where she was living.
Now there was no question in my mind what I had to do.
Someone had to remind Auxila’s wife of her duty. It is decreed by Itzamnaaj for all of our history that the wives of sacrificed nobles are to join their husbands in the overworld by an honorable suicide. Auxila was my close friend, my brother, and his wife deserved better than the horrors of the Outskirts.
If she would not heed the call of the gods, I would have to help her.
When the morning star passed through the reddest part of the great scorpion in the sky once more, I dressed in a commoner’s loincloth and leather sandals so as not to be recognized.
The Outskirts shelter the dregs of Kanuataba, where men and women have been saved from death by omens but exiled from the city proper for their crimes. Here were thieves and adulterers who had escaped death by an eclipse, errant borrowers who lived only by the grace of the evening star, drug addicts, and even those we are told are the greatest sinners of all, bound to walk the earth for all eternity from the north to the south: those who stupidly worship only those deities who they believe favor them.
No limestone or marble is wasted on the buildings in the Outskirts, and if any of the quarrymen are caught sneaking limestone, they are guaranteed a public death, so the buildings are made of mud and thatch. There are only the illegal trades—the market for dream mushrooms, gambling on ball court games, and whoring.
I had obscured my face with my blotting towel, which I use to prepare the gesso for books. In the palm of my hand I carried several cacao beans and doled out each one as I spoke with women in the streets who might be able to guide me to Haniba. These women all offered me their bodies in exchange for the bean and were utterly confused when I refused them. Instead, I spoke with an old whore. She sent me another two hundred paces down the causeway to a series of stalls, which I had not seen since I was in the Outskirts as a young boy, where I lost my own virginity.
In the back of one of the stalls, I heard a woman moaning. I went around and found a man on top of Haniba, a vile man thrusting himself into her. Haniba was defiling herself! There were four cacao shells laid neatly on the ground beside them, and in the midst of their copulation they could not hear as I leaned down to check the beans. I found no beans inside two of the shells. The man was a cheat.
I picked up a large sitting stone in the corner of the stall and raised it above my head. I bore down with all my might. The man slumped on top of Auxila’s wife and she screamed, not understanding. I believe she thought the stone had come down from Iztamnaaj himself to punish her for her trespasses. But when I lifted the man off her and she saw my face, she turned away. Haniba was deeply ashamed. Yet there could be no deeper shame before the gods than that she was still living on this earth.
She spoke:
—They have taken everything from me, Paktul, my house, all of my clothing, and Auxila’s goods—
—I know why you are here, and I am come to implore you, Haniba. You must act prudently. Your children starve because no one will take them until you are gone. People will learn you are still alive—
The woman wept, barely able to breathe:
—I cannot heed the order until I know my children are safe. Flamed Plume is turning to the age where she will be taken up by some old man who wishes to have a fresh girl! You have seen the way Prince Smoke Song himself looks at my Flamed Plume—she might have been queen, Paktul! The king was considering their betrothal, and the prince is good, deserving of her. But now that her father has been shamed, we all know they cannot be betrothed. So what good man will take Flamed Plume? Surely you understand, Paktul. Surely this shame is like the shame you felt when your father left you!—
I was tempted to strike her for speaking this way. But when I saw the look of sadness in her eyes, I could not hit this woman I had known since Auxila and I were boys together.
I spoke:
—You must find yourself a length of vine and wrap it around your neck by the turn of the next sun. You must hang yourself proudly, Haniba, to fulfill your duties as wife of a noble sacrificed to the gods—
—But he was not sacrificed to the gods, Paktul! He was murdered by a king! Jaguar Imix ordained his death because Auxila had the courage to speak out against him, and the king sacrificed him in the name of a god that does not exist! This god, Akabalam, surely cannot have called for Auxila’s sacrifice, having never revealed his power to us or to any other noble in a dream!—
I said nothing of my own doubts about the new god. For just as a scribe should not question a divination, it is not for a widow to question a king.
I spoke:
—What can you know of the conversation between a king and a counselor he sacrifices? How can you know the king never revealed Akabalam?—
Haniba buried her head in her hands.
As a nobleman, seeing such a woman make such a transgression against the gods, my duty was to kill her.
But I was powerless in the face of her sadness.
EIGHTEEN
THE CDC HAD ARRANGED SPECIAL DISPENSATION FOR CHEL TO BE on the roads, and the Getty security team provided an escort who followed her toward Mount Hollywood. From the top of Mulholland Drive, even against the night sky she could see smoke rising from distant corners of the city. Yet as she raced east, Chel felt the first glimmers of hope she had had in days. Patrick had agreed to meet her at the planetarium immediately.
East Mulholland was eerily empty but for the occasional police car and National Guard jeep. Yet there was an acrid smell in the air—maybe the burning was closer than she thought. She started to roll up her window. Just then a woman in exercise clothes ran into the middle of the street, right in front of her car. Chel wouldn’t have seen her except for the flash of the woman’s reflective running shoes.
Chel swerved, her Volvo’s tires skidding across the road, and finally she veered onto the shoulder, heart racing. In her rearview mirror, she saw the jogger keep on going, as if nothing had happened. The woman was on autopilot. Chel had heard stories of VFI victims raiding pharmacies for sleeping pills, drinking to the point of alcohol poisoning, and paying huge prices to drug dealers for illegal sedatives. But the woman now receding behind her was trying to do it naturally, attempting to exhaust herself into oblivion. It looked as if she might collapse in the street at any moment. Yet on and on she went.
The security car following her pulled up alongside the Volvo. Once Chel had insisted she was okay, they wound their way up to the top of the mountain without further incident.
Fifteen minutes later, their caravan reached Griffith Observatory. The massive stone structure had always reminded Chel of a mosque. Patrick had told her that, years ago, before the city lights made most stars too hard to see, this had been the best place in the country to study the night sky. Now it was better suited for city vistas; the entire Southland shined below. From here, the fires burning against the night looked almost beautiful. From here, Chel could almost forget that L.A. was at risk of its own collapse.
The security detail peeled off, and Chel checked her phone before getting out of the car. No new messages. Nothing from her mom. Or Stanton. She wondered when she could expect another anything. The possibility that she’d have something to tell Stanton next time kept her going.
She got out of her car, and a minute later Patrick was greeting her at the observatory entrance. “Hi there,” he said.
“Hi yourself.”
They held each other for a moment, fitting together perfectly at his very manageable five-foot-six. How strange it was that, after talking to this man every day, living with him, sleeping so many nights next to him, Chel was huddled against him and had no good idea what had been happening in his life for months.
Patrick pulled back from their embrace. “Glad you got up here okay.” His blue eyes gleamed beneath his eye shield, and blond hair framed his face. He wore the striped button-down Chel had given him last Christmas, and she wondered if he’d put it on for a reason. He rarely wore it when they were together; it was she who’d used it more, as a nightshirt. He’d liked taking it off her.
“I still can’t believe you were in there with patient zero,” he said. “Jesus.” He stepped back to look at her. “Pulling all-nighters again?”
“Something like that.”
“Hardly a first for you.”
Chel could hear the note of longing in his voice, his desire to remind her of what they once shared. “I really appreciate you coming up here,” she said. “I do.”
“All you had to do was ask,” he said. “A codex from the classic. Unbelievable.”
Chel looked back over the L.A. basin behind them. A gray haze of ash filled the sky. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “It’s eerie out here—and the clock is ticking.”
Patrick lingered behind her for a moment, squinting into the darkness. “Love the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night,” he said, paraphrasing his favorite epitaph.
The three-hundred-seat Oschin Planetarium dome rose seventy-five feet from ground to apex and gave visitors the feeling of standing inside a great unfinished work of art, a basilica ceiling yet to be painted. They stood in the dark, lit only by the glow of the two red exit signs and a laptop. While Patrick focused on the images of the codex on the computer, Chel studied the strange contours of the star projector in the middle of the room. It looked like a futuristic monster, a mechanical hydra that projected thousands of stars onto the aluminum ceiling through cratered hemispheres.
“Whoa, I’ve never seen this before in a codex, a reference to a star war timed to the evening star,” Patrick said. “It’s unbelievable.”
The images of the book had swiftly worked their magic on him too. He dimmed the lights, flipped a switch on the projector, and now the dome filled with stars jetting across the night sky, rotating through hundreds of positions, magically transforming. Chel had been here a dozen times in the year and a half they were together, but every time it felt new.
“There are dozens of astronomical references in what you’ve already translated,” Patrick said, pointing at the ceiling with a laser. “Not just the zodiac but positional references and other things we can use to anchor us.”
Chel had never paid enough attention to the details of his work, and now she was embarrassed by how little she knew.
“Come on,” he said. “You know this stuff. It’s a historical–astronomical GPS.”
He was teasing her.
“You’ll recall—Dr. Manu—that the earth rotates around the sun. And on its own axis. But it’s also oscillating back and forth with respect to inertial space, due to the moon’s tidal forces. It’s like a toy top that wobbles. So the sun’s path as we see it across the sky changes a little every year. Which is what 2012ers are all obsessed with, of course.”
“Galactic alignment?”
Patrick nodded. “The crazies think that because the moon, earth, and sun are lined up on the winter solstice, and we’re nearing the time when the sun will intersect with some imagined equator of the dark rift of the Milky Way, we’ll all be destroyed because of the tidal waves or the sun exploding. Depends who you ask. Never mind that the ‘equator’ they’re talking about is totally imagined.”
Projected stars moved in slow concentric circles above their heads. Chel sank down into one of the cloth-covered seats, tired of craning her neck.
“So the earth wobbles back and forth,” Patrick continued. “And not only does the sun’s path across the sky change as a result, but so do the stars’.”
“But even if they shift over time,” Chel asked, “the stars we see here in Los Angeles aren’t very different from the ones they see in Seattle, right? So how are we supposed to get a good location from that? The differences are pretty imperceptible.”
“Imperceptible to our eyes. We have too much light pollution. But the ancients’ naked-eye observations were more precise than ours could ever be.”
Patrick’s own love affair with the Maya began while he pursued a PhD in archaeoastronomy. He became obsessed with the analyses that the Maya astronomers were able to do from their temples: approximations of planetary cycles, understanding of the concept of galaxies, even a basic grasping of the idea of moons attached to other planets. The modern decline of stargazing was a tragedy, Patrick felt.
They both stared up at the frozen sky. “So let’s start at Tikal,” he said. “This is what it looked like there on the vernal equinox on the approximate date you got from the carbon dating and the iconography. Let’s say: March twentieth, A.D. 930” He used the laser to highlight a bright object in the western sky. “According to your scribe, on his vernal equinox, Venus was visible in the dead middle. So we rotate the coordinates of the star projector within the range of the Petén, until we get Venus in the right place.”
The stars spun above them until Venus was at the apex of the planetarium ceiling. “Looks like about fourteen to sixteen degrees north,” Patrick said finally.
But Chel knew enough to know that from fourteen to sixteen degrees north would span a range of more than two hundred miles wide. “That’s as close as we can get? We have to do better than that.”
Patrick began to shift stars. “That’s only the first constraint. From what you’ve already translated, we’ve got dozens more to parse. We’ll go as fast as we can.”
They worked side by side, with the projector and Patrick’s computerized star charts, the codex providing more inputs. Much of the work was done in silence, with Patrick entirely focused on the sky above.
It was after two a.m., during a long stretch of silence, when Chel found her thoughts drifting uncomfortably to Volcy and his deathbed.
To her relief, Patrick interrupted them. “So before this all started,” he said, “did you have a chance to take that trip to the Petén you wanted? Were you writing all the articles you’d hoped to?”
When she’d ended their relationship and he moved out of her house, these were the excuses she gave.
“I guess,” Chel said quietly.
“After this, you’ll be a keynote speaker for the rest of your life,” he said.
Patrick already seemed to have forgotten that she might be facing a jail term after this. Yet even now, in the midst of this catastrophe, Chel could hear the tinge of jealousy in his voice. Despite Patrick’s cutting-edge scholarship, there were few people who were interested in archaeoastronomy. He’d spent his career trying to convince the academy that what he did mattered. But he always found himself presenting at the ends of conferences, publishing in obscure journals, and having book proposals rejected.
Chel hadn’t really processed how deep his competitive streak ran until the night after she won the American Society of Linguistics’ most prestigious award. They’d gotten to the bottom of a second bottle of Sangiovese at their favorite Italian restaurant, and Patrick tilted his glass toward her.
“To you,” he’d said. “For picking the right specialty.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he’d said, downing a long sip of wine. “I’m just happy epigraphy is well appreciated.”
He did his best to behave every time another of her articles was accepted or she received another award, but it was forced cheer. Eventually, Chel limited what she told him about work to the few frustrations she had with her job: students not doing their work or the politics of the Getty board. She shared every bad thing that happened and none of the good; it was easier. But with each little omission, Chel felt the distance growing between them.
Patrick again shifted the star pattern on the planetarium ceiling.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” he said.
Chel looked up. “You have?”
“Yeah. For a couple of months. Her name is Martha.”
“Is it real?”
“I think so. I’ve been staying at her place. She was anxious about me seeing you tonight, but she understood the urgency. Pretty weird excuse to get together with your ex in the middle of the night.”
“I didn’t know anyone under sixty was named Martha.”
“She’s plenty south of sixty, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So she’s a child. Even better.”
“She’s thirty-five, and a successful theater director. And she wants to get married.”
Chel was astounded that he was thinking of marriage so soon after their breakup. “At least you’re not in the same field.”
Patrick looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Just that you’ll never have to worry about… work disagreements.”
“You think that was our problem?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“The problem wasn’t me competing with you, Chel,” he said slowly. “Until you realize you’ve long surpassed whatever expectations your father might have had for you, you’ll never be happy. Or be able to make anyone else happy.”
Chel turned back to the codex images. “We should focus.”
PATRICK FINALLY STOPPED the projector ten minutes later, breaking the silence of the enormous room. “This matches all of the constraints,” he said, pointing up. “All eighteen.”
“You’re sure?” Chel asked. “This is it?”
“This is it,” he said. “Between 15.3 and 15.8 degrees north and 900 to 970 A.D. We can’t know exactly where it falls, but we can apply the mean values. So we’re basically talking about fifteen and a half degrees north and 935 A.D. I told you I’d figure it out.”
This was the same sky above Paktul as he had written the codex. The exact same. Chel had plenty of occasion to feel genuine awe in her work, but this feeling of transcending time and space was unique, and she sensed them getting closer to what they needed.
“Near the southern part of the Petén, just like you thought,” Patrick said, rolling up his sleeves. He spread out a map of the Maya region on a desk beside the star projector. The map was positional, with latitude lines marking each half-degree change. “It’s not Tikal or Uaxactun or Piedras Negras; those are in the seventeen-degree range. So we’re looking at something farther south.”
He traced an invisible line between the degree markers. The location of each of the known major Maya cities in the southeast Petén was marked, but Patrick’s invisible line didn’t intersect with any of them, or with any of the minor ones either.
Now something was bothering Chel.
“Is there another computer I can use?” she asked.
Patrick pointed toward a small office in the back of the planetarium.
At the monitor, she found her way to Google Earth and a digital map showing contemporary villages in Guatemala. There were no latitude markings. So Chel pulled up another map online that had detailed latitude lines, then toggled between them until she found what she was searching for.
Fifteen and a half degrees north ran almost exactly through the place she was born.
CHEL’S ONLY MEMORY from her childhood in Kiaqix was of riding on her father’s shoulders. It was early evening in the dry season, and Alvar had finished working for the day, so he took her to settle a claim with a neighbor over a chicken missing from their coop. From her perch, Chel watched as young girls brought pails of cornmeal from the mill back to their mothers, to be used for dinner tortillas and breakfast drinks. Whistle music came from the houses, and a drum was played; Alvar danced to it as he walked, and Chel felt the sandpaper of his beard on her legs.
She’d been back to her homeland several times since her mother took her from Kiaqix, and each time she fell more in love with the communal bonfires where stories of the ancestors were still told, the labor-sharing on the milpas at harvest time, the gifts from the beekeepers, and the villagers’ spirited volleyball and soccer games.
Kiaqix was hundreds of miles from any of the big cities, the highways, or the ruins, and reaching it wasn’t easy. You could take a small plane to a landing strip five miles east. But there was only one car in the village of two thousand people, so you’d likely be going those last five miles on foot. Factor in the rainy season, which made the one road into town treacherous, and you were dealing with one complicated journey.
More, Chel’s mother refused to return to Guatemala and always begged Chel not to either. Ha’ana believed that as long as the ladinos controlled the country, the Manu family would never be safe. With tensions high and violence erupting again, Ha’ana’s anxiety had only increased.
“What is it?” Patrick asked from the doorway. Behind him, the planetarium was pitch-dark, as if the world ended here, in this tiny office.
She showed him the map she’d pulled up online.
He leaned over her to better see the screen, and instinctively Chel put her hand on the cuff of his shirt, feeling the fabric at her fingertips. Whatever was lost between them, the feel of him was so familiar. “Are there any major ruins on that latitude?” he asked.
Chel shook her head.
“But Kiaqix is a small village,” Patrick said. “You said the scribe is talking about a city of tens of thousands.”
He was right: Kiaqix was a no-man’s-land for the ancients. No artifacts had been discovered there from the classic era, and the nearest ruins were two hundred miles away.
Then again, Chel thought, staring at the map, the circumstances described in the codex were eerily similar to the stories she knew: the oral history of a king destroying his own city. “The Original Trio,” she reminded Patrick. “Kiaqix was supposedly founded when three city-dwellers escaped to the jungle.”
“I thought you didn’t believe there was a lost city. That it was a legend.”
“There’s no evidence either way,” Chel whispered. “All we have are the oral history and the people who say they saw the ruins but couldn’t prove it.”
Remembering now, Patrick said, “Your uncle, right?”
“My father’s cousin.”
More than three decades ago, Chiam Manu left Kiaqix and went into the jungle for more than a week. When he returned, he claimed to have found Kiaqix’s lost city, from which the oral history claimed their ancestors came. But Chiam brought nothing back and would tell no one in which direction the lost city lay. Few believed him; most ridiculed Chiam and called him a liar. When he was murdered by the army weeks later, the truth died with him.
“What about Volcy?” Patrick continued. “You think it’s possible he’s from Kiaqix?”
Chel took a breath. “Everything he said about his village could be said of Kiaqix, I guess. And also about three hundred other villages across the Petén.”
Patrick put his hand on top of hers and leaned closer. Chel smelled traces of the sandalwood soap he always used. “How does this book land in your lap in the middle of all this? It’s one hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Chel turned back to the computer screen. There was no word in Qu’iche for coincidence, and it wasn’t only a problem of translation. When events happened together and pointed in a single direction, her people used a different word. It was the same word Chel’s father used in his final letter from prison, when he sensed his death was near: ch’umilal.
Fate.
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