And so, his skin rippling with revulsion, Will sat and watched as the big spider slowed its agitated movements. He prayed it would jump back onto the wall, but it seemed to like its new perch. It settled down two inches from his neck.
The jaguar, too, settled into a crouch and began grooming her cubs, drawing them one at a time between her huge paws and licking them dry. But all the while keeping an eye on the other two, and on Will.
Outside, the storm raged unabated. And behind the big cat he spotted the pacas creeping back into their far corner of the temple. The jaguar glanced at them once, then continued her grooming. One of the cubs, the curious one who'd been playing with Will's bootlaces, started over to investigate the new arrivals but the mother batted it back toward Will. So the cub came for his boot again.
Get away, little guy, he thought, projecting the silent words at the cub. Please don't draw any attention to me.
Apparently the cub wasn't telepathic. It began swatting at Will's bootlaces, but quickly seemed to tire of that.
Good. Go back to mama.
But the cub had other ideas. It hopped up on Will's thigh and tumbled into his lap. Will saw the mother's head snap up, heard a low growl rumble from her throat.
Fear sweat coursed down his body in rivulets. What did he do now? He sure as hell didn't want the mother coming over here and retrieving her little wanderer from his lap, but did he dare lift it and put it back on the floor?
And if he moved, what would the spider do?
The cub settled the crisis by curling into a ball and starting to purr.
Will and the mother stared at each other, but she was no longer growling. Lightning flashed in green eyes that reminded him of Maya's. She blinked at him, then turned back to one of her other cubs and continued grooming it.
And then Will noticed an odd sensation stealing through him, working toward his skin from deep within, spreading until it suffused and enveloped him.
Here he sat with a hairy horror on his shoulder, trapped between meteorological fury raging outside and imminent clawed death crouching just a few feet away, and yet he could not remember when he had last felt so at peace with himself, with the entire world.
No predators here in this tiny stone temple, he realized. We're all prey tonight. The storm and the river are the predators, hungry for us all. Tomorrow we'll go back to our ordained roles, but tonight, at this time, in this place . . . truce.
Gripping the feeling tightly to keep it from slipping away, he closed his eyes and clutched it to him. But he did not sleep. Oh, no, for then he'd lose the feeling, and he wanted to milk every last dram of peace from it. Who knew when he would feel this again, if ever?
Slowly, Will sneaked a hand from the machete handle and with one finger gently stroked the damp furball in his lap. It purred even louder.
He felt as if his head might float away.
PART TWO
Hidden Harmonics
1
I might have dozed off. I couldn't be sure because I'd lost all sense of time. I didn't remember the storm fading, but I did remember opening my eyes and looking out the temple doorway and seeing a translucent predawn sky turning the color of skim milk. The jungle's early risers were already calling and flitting from tree to tree.
The mother jaguar stood in the other doorway, staring out at the clearing. I wondered how that was sitting with the pacas, but then noticed that their corner was empty. So was my shoulder. My spider friend was gone. Couldn't say I'd miss him. I checked out the walls around me. A few roaches and smaller spiders still clung to the stone, but most of their many-legged brethren had cleared out.
I winced as needle-like claws dug into my thigh. The cub on my lap was awake and stretching its foot pads as it yawned. Finally it hopped down to the floor. It padded over to where its two siblings lay wound into a ball and jumped on them. In seconds they were rolling around on the stone floor.
The big cat turned then and approached them. It picked up one by the neck and headed for the door near me. As it passed, its green glare said, Don't even think about making off with one of these.
Never even crossed my mind, I thought back at her.
The remaining pair of cubs scampered to the doorway and started mewing after her. She picked her way quickly and gracefully down the steps and took off across the sodden clearing without a look back.
I decided this was an excellent time to make my exit. I sensed the magic worked by the storm and flood last night wearing off. Might be prudent to put some distance between myself and Mama Jaguar.
My chilled, wet joints creaked and protested as I uncoiled from my cramped corner and staggered to my feet. I felt like the Tin Man with a terminal case of rust. I groaned and arched my back, then stumbled to the opposite door—away from the jaguar cubs. Machete in hand, I made my way down the steps.
Except for the blasted palm and the squishy ground, the clearing and the pyramid seemed little changed since yesterday. The sky was rapidly growing lighter as I moved toward the trees. I placed myself behind a thick mossy trunk and peeked back at the pyramid. I spotted the mother jaguar already heading down again with another cub. I watched till she returned the third time.
“So long,” I said when she exited with her last, and noted that my voice sounded unusually hoarse. The result of dehydration and a night sitting in bat guano? Or the tumor?
“Back to reality,” I muttered as I stepped into the clearing. I looked at the temple and the surrounding circle of jungle.
This was reality?
My stomach rumbled with hunger. And I was thirsty as all hell. I never did find a coconut yesterday, but the jungle floor had to be littered with them this morning.
I rested my machete blade on my shoulder like a rifle and headed across the clearing. Yesterday I'd been so hesitant to enter the jungle. This morning was different. I was different. Somehow I felt Mesoamerica had already hurled its worst at me and I'd survived. I felt ready for anything.
As I'd guessed, no trouble finding freshly fallen coconuts. Opening them, however, was another matter. On the first two tries I split the damn things in half, splattering ninety percent of the milk across myself and the jungle. Ambrosio had made it look so easy.
On the third I got it right, chipping a small opening in the top. I drank greedily, gulping the cool, vaguely sour fluid as fast as my throat would allow, letting the excess run over my jaw. When had anything, even an ice-cold Rolling Rock after mowing the lawn, ever tasted so good?
I tried another and wrecked it, but was able to pop the top on the next. Then it was time to look for food. Not much meat inside these green coconuts, so I set about looking for one that had ripened a little more. I didn't have much luck on the coconut front, but I did come across a banana tree that had been knocked down by the storm. A bright green four-foot bunch lay in the brush, waiting for me.
I'd never eaten bananas this green but I wasn't going to let that stop me. The jungle was offering breakfast and I wasn't in any position to refuse. But as I started tugging at a couple of the bananas, a huge hairy black spider hopped out from within the bunch and scuttled toward me.
I jumped back and raised my machete. This was one scary-looking creature but I wasn't going to let it keep me from breakfast. My first instinct was to squash it with the flat of the blade, but I hesitated.
“Move on,” I told it. “I had one of your cousins on my shoulder all last night. I'm up to here with spiders.”
The thing didn't budge, so I gently slipped the point of the machete under its body. It jumped up on the flat of the blade and I quickly dumped it onto a broad leaf a foot or so away. It ran down the leaf and disappeared into the shadows.
“You need a new tree anyway,” I called after it. “This one's shot.”
I had to smile as I tore off a six-fingered hand from the bunch. I'd been here less than a day and already I was talking to bugs.
The bananas were puny and didn't have much flavor, but they filled the void. I ate three, noticing a little difficulty in
swallowing— nothing serious, but my gullet felt slightly narrower.
It's beginning, I thought with dismay. The traitorous tissue was extending its domain into areas where I'd be constantly aware of its presence. But I'd known this would happen, and I wasn't going to dwell on the inevitable.
I broke off another hand of bananas and took them with me as I made my way back to the clearing.
The sky was bright now, the sun cresting the trees and bathing the temple atop the pyramid—my pyramid—with golden light, but the rest of the clearing still lay in shadow. I wished I'd thought to bring a camera.
I headed back to the gully where I found red muddy water still running through it, but only a few inches deep. I made my way upstream to where I'd left the Jeep—at least where I thought I'd left it—but it wasn't there. I did find a freshly broken root jutting from the floor of the gully. This could have been what the wheels had caught on last night.
I got a queasy feeling in my gut, not so much from the missing Jeep—I was pretty sure I'd be able to find it somewhere downstream—but because of what I had in the Jeep. My duffel bag contained some extremely important equipment that I'd have no hope of replacing here in the wilds of Mesoamerica. And I wasn't thinking of my laptop.
I began splashing down the gully. How far could it have gone? And what if the duffel had washed out? It could be anywhere. The duffel was water resistant but not waterproof. And even if it remained in the Jeep, everything inside it could be water damaged by now.
I rounded a curve and there she was, upright and facing me, her rear bumper jammed into the curve of the bank. She was scratched, dented, filthy, and strewn with storm flotsam, but I thought her beautiful enough to kiss.
I slowed to a walk, gasping for breath—damn, I was out of shape. As I neared her, half a dozen screeching spider monkeys tumbled from the open side panel and scampered away into the trees. I picked up my pace. I knew from safari rides back home how much damage those little creatures could do to a car. I unsnapped the rear panel and sighed with relief when I saw my duffel, intact and still zippered closed.
But it was wet. My fingers shook a little as I yanked back the zipper and pawed through the clothing, toiletries, emergency medications, and sundry items inside. Everything seemed dry so far. Finally I found it—a small black leather case about half the size of the laptop. I unzipped that and checked the contents of the Ziploc bag inside. The two 250cc bags of dextrose and water were intact; the IV tubing and needles looked fine; and none of the ampoules of potassium chloride were broken.
I leaned my head on my arms and let go a deep sigh of relief. This was my escape hatch. If—I should say “when”—the tumor extended to the point where I could no longer swallow, or I was having too much difficulty sucking air past my swollen larynx, this was my exit ramp. Rather than let them cart me to some hospital where I'd be hooked up to IVs and feeding tubes, I'd brought along my own IV.
When it was time to check out, I'd empty the amps of potassium chloride into the D5W, hook up the tubing, hang the bag from a branch, stick the needle in a vein, and let it flow. The KCl cocktail would stop my heart muscle dead in its tracks.
Quick, clean, easy, and painless.
Well, relatively painless. I figured that high a concentration of KCl had to burn when it hit the vein, and I could count on some chest pain when my heart seized up, but nothing I couldn't tolerate for less than a minute. That was all it would take. A hell of a lot better and more dignified than the alternative. And best of all, I'd be pulling the plug, not the tumor.
I'd prevailed on Dave, as a last personal favor, to arrange to have my body shipped back to Bedford if I died down here. I hadn't told him that I fully expected the “if” to be a “when.”
I heard a car engine somewhere far behind me. More relief. It could only be Ambrosio. I quickly zipped up the leather case and shoved it back into the duffel.
Now. How to play this? Should I be furious at being left alone in the jungle overnight in a storm, or be cool?
Curiously, I was not furious. I could have been killed, yes, but instead I'd had a once-in-a-lifetime experience that left me with a different take on the world, especially this part of it. Yesterday I'd been a complete stranger here. Now, although I was not by any means an integrated part of Maya's Mesoamerica, I no longer felt like an interloper. I felt tenuously . . . connected.
I'd come here for an adventure, and sure as hell, I was having one. So try as I might, I could find no anger in me.
But I wasn't cool either—I was going to be overjoyed to see Ambrosio. Damned if I wasn't ready to kiss his homely face when he showed up.
But I could play it cool. Very cool.
So when the other Jeep rounded the curve, I was lounging on the hood, back against the windshield, a machete through my belt, and a half-eaten banana in my hand.
Ambrosio jumped out of the driver side, and from the passenger side—Maya. Despite Terziski's “discrepancies at her primary sources,” my heart gave a little tug at the sight of her. So she hadn't abandoned me in the forest. She wasn't Xtabay.
But though this Maya bore little resemblance to the woman I'd met back home, she was just as striking, if not more so. She'd plaited her hair into two long braids and was dressed in an ankle-length shift of coarse white cotton, embroidered at the neck and hem and cinched at the waist with a colorful cloth belt.
“Dr. Burleigh!” she said, hurrying toward me. “Are you—?”
“Care for a banana?” I said, holding up my leftovers. With food and fluid, my hoarseness had receded.
She slowed her pace and grinned. Those dimples appeared, and her jade eyes flashed.
Ambrosio began laughing, and rattled off a string of clicks, shhshes, and hard consonants that definitely was not Spanish. Mayan maybe?
Maya was sauntering toward me now, hands on hips, smiling. “I was so worried about you, and yet how do I find you? Looking as if you have been on a picnic.”
That smile. I was glad I could make her smile.
“Just because I'm the shining blind man in the fortress doesn't mean I'm not adaptable.”
“Obviously this is true.”
Over her shoulder I spotted a second man crawling out of the rear of her Jeep. He'd been cut from the same stuff as Ambrosio; looked like they even had the same dentist.
“Buenos dias,” he said with a gilded smile.
“That is Jorge,” Maya said. “He knows engines. He and Ambrosio are going to stay here and get this first Jeep going again while you and I travel on in the new one.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
I hauled out my duffel and carried it to the new Jeep. I waited for Ambrosio and Jorge to remove the tool box, oil cans, and gas jugs from the rear, then tossed it inside. I turned and found Maya in the driver seat, nibbling delicately on one of my bananas.
“Want me to drive?”
She shook her head. “Maybe later, but here I know the way better.”
Ambrosio and Jorge waved as we drove off.
I watched Maya drive. She was relaxed, almost casual, and worked the standard shift like a pro. Her long legs pulled at the fabric of her shift as her bare feet worked the gas and clutch pedals.
“Is that a native dress?” I said.
“It's called a huipil. It's very comfortable.”
“That and the braids make you look like you belong here.”
“Thank you. In Westchester the braids would be seen as an attempt to look girlish. Here they are simply practical.” She glanced at me. “And you . . . you look . . . different.”
“Besides needing a bath and a shave?”
“Yes. Different inside.”
I told her about last night. She nodded often as she listened, smiling now and again.
“You became closer to the Mother last night,” she said when I was done. “Some of the walls of your fortress were weakened.”
I didn't know about the Mother business, but I knew the night spent sitting in that ancient temple h
ad taken me farther from my old life than the whole day of flying that had preceded it.
I began to wonder if that might have been Maya's plan all along: Have Ambrosio fake a breakdown and leave me alone overnight; a trial by fire, so to speak—or in this case, by storm.
I wanted to ask her, but didn't know how she'd react. She might take it as an insult. I decided to see how things went and ask her later. I might ask about the “discrepancies” in her CV then too. Or I might wait until I heard more from Terziski.
Right now, as we splashed along the green tunnel of the gully, I had another, more immediate question.
“Where are we going?”
“To find your first harmonic.”
“Harmonic? What's that?”
“Do you remember the tines I used to survey your chakras?”
“Of course.”
“We are going to find some for you and let you make them your own.”
“Find? You make them sound like they spring from the ground, like mushrooms.”
“They don't grow. They were fashioned, and then hidden away.”
“By whom?”
“No one knows.”
This was starting to sound like science fiction. “Okay, we find these tines, then what?”
“You will see.”
“These tines,” I said. “They aren't anything like crystals, are they?”
A tiny smile. “You have a problem with crystals?”
“I do,” said, thinking of the mythology that had grown up around them. “But let me ask first. What do crystals mean to you?”
“The Mother forms them deep within her, putting sand and water under heat and pressure for millions of years, and then she pushes them to the surface. Some say they are her tears.”
“You don't believe that do you?”
She shrugged. “I feel it is a bit romantic, but who is to say?”
“Do you believe they have mystical powers?”
“What do you believe?”
Remembering the crystals hanging in her office, I chose my words carefully.
“I'm not looking to offend you, Maya, but I've got real problems with that whole crystal business.”