The Fifth Harmonic

  “You will not offend me. Ask—ask anything you want. I will tell you what I know. That is the only way you will learn, the only way blind Cecil will learn to see.”

  “I can question anything and everything? I can speak bluntly and you won't mind?”

  “I insist.”

  “Oh-ho,” I said, grinning. “You may regret that.”

  She returned the smile. “Yes, I am sure I will.”

  “Okay. Crystals. They're just rocks. All rocks except meteorites come from the earth—‘the Mother,’ as you call her. So why should crystals have more powers or healing properties than, say, slate? Or granite?”

  “If you had to guess, how would you answer?”

  “I'd say it was because they're prettier and make nicer jewelry than slate or granite, and therefore command a better price.”

  Another smile. “So, you are a cynic as well as a skeptic.”

  I shrugged. “You haven't been dealing with HMOs and the other zillion breeds of managed care companies like I have.”

  “No,” she said. “Insurance companies would never approve of my methods.”

  “Yeah, well, they were never too crazy about mine either. I tended to ignore their guidelines. I can't tell you what it did to me to hear of their CEOs taking home millions of bucks a year—I read of one guy getting eight million in cash and stock one year—while the care and services their companies offered were cut to the bone. Make the patients crawl for days through a bureaucratic maze to get an antibiotic that's less than ten years old, but keep that bottom line where it does the most for the stock. And on the doctor side, build in disincentives to actually treat people. Squeeze the doctors, squeeze the patients so that some MBA can get a bigger year-end bonus, because God knows eight million isn't enough—he's got to have more. I know doctors saving lives every day who don't make one twentieth—one fortieth of that. And how many lives has this CEO saved?”

  My voice was getting hoarse. I stopped and cleared my throat.

  “You are very angry,” Maya said.

  “Yes. I am.” I hadn't realized just how angry. Dealing with managed care companies was one part of my practice I didn't miss. “So maybe you can understand why I get an attack of cynicism when I see lots of money being made in medicine, established or ‘alternative.’ And believe me, somebody's making a killing on all those zillions of crystal pendants being sold because of their supposed healing powers.”

  “Yes, that is true. Wherever there is a need, profiteers are sure to rush in. But that says more about the sellers than what they are selling. Crystals are indeed rocks, but not ‘just’ rocks.”

  “Basically we're talking about quartz, right?”

  “Yes. You have heard of a quartz radio, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you ever heard of a slate radio or a granite radio?”

  “Touché,” I said.

  She had me. No slate or granite or any other rock I could think of had piezoelectric properties.

  Obviously she'd had this conversation before. How many times? Lots, I'd bet. She seemed so very comfortable with it. And with whom? I watched her long slim fingers on the steering wheel, the play of the muscles just beneath the skin of her forearms as she guided us along the gully, and wondered if she had a man in her life. And if not, why not? So much I didn't know about this woman.

  “And can slate or granite rotate the plane of polarized light?” she said.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you will grant that quartz is not just another rock? That it has properties other than being ‘prettier’ which set it apart from other rocks?”

  “Granted, but not necessarily healing properties.”

  She glanced at me, her expression serious. “Do you know that they do not?”

  “No,” I admitted, “I don't know much at all about this stuff. But I haven't seen any concrete evidence to convince me of any healing properties in quartz, and until I do . . .”

  “You will go on doubting.”

  “Right. How can I do anything else? It's the way I've been trained. The scientific method. Double-blind randomized trials. I can't accept anecdotal evidence—you know, ‘Aunt Sophie tried it and after one sip she threw away her hearing aids.’ You've got to rule out placebo effect, investigator error, and prejudice. And the results have to be reproducible. That's the key.”

  “Then I suppose you must disbelieve much of what most people do believe.”

  “You've got that right. I don't believe in psychic hotlines, flying saucers, visiting aliens, astral projection, channeling, tarot, telepathy, spoon bending, clairvoyance, seances, remote viewing, reincarnation, astrology, aromatherapy, psychic surgery, perpetual motion, Genesis, Revelation, Kaballah, palmistry, phrenology, levitation, the Bermuda Triangle, Edgar Cayce, Jean Dixon, Immanuel Velikovsky, L. Ron Hubbard, the Loch Ness monster, and lots of other stuff I can't think of at the moment.”

  “I really do have my hands full with you, don't I, Wilbur Cecil Burleigh.”

  “I warned you.”

  “Surely you are the most skeptical man in the world.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” I said.

  Maya hit the brakes, and as we skidded to a stop, she threw back her head and laughed loud and long. A wonderful sound, bursting from deep within her.

  But what was so damn funny? And then I realized what I'd said and began to laugh along with her.

  When was the last time I'd laughed like this, sharing it with another person? I couldn't recall. Not since the divorce, certainly, and probably not for a good long time before that. It felt so good to lean back and roar—at myself, of all things. What a wonderful release. I couldn't remember when I'd felt so alive.

  For the first time in too, too long, I was having fun.

  2

  Eventually Maya climbed the Jeep out of the gully and headed uphill. The jungle didn't thin, it simply became slanted. The going got rougher as we bounced along a rudimentary trail. At one point we slowed to a crawl to negotiate our way past a pair of old huipil-clad women, each leading a burro-powered wagon.

  We stopped where the ground leveled out in a narrow pass between a couple of the mountains. Maya had brought along some rice and beans wrapped in thick corn tortillas, and we ate them, washing them down with cool tea from a thermos.

  After a bumpy ride through the pass, we made it to the other side of the mountains. It was drier here, and the trees seemed more coniferous, but it was just as green.

  “Why travel all this distance for tines?” I said. “You seemed to have a nice collection back in Katonah.”

  “Yes, but they are mine. I am taking you to places where you can find your own. They will help you harmonize with the Mother.”

  “You're talking about a planet as if it's a person. The earth is a clump of stellar debris circling a ball of fusing hydrogen.”

  Maya shook her head. “The earth is a living thing, the All-Mother. Some call her Gaea, some call her Tellus, but by whatever name, she is alive.”

  “Sorry,” I said, always careful about treading on someone's holy ground, “but planets are not alive.”

  “Maybe Mercury and Venus and Mars and the rest aren't, but ours is. When the living things on a planet reach a certain critical mass, the combined life force imbues the planet with a life of its own, separate from the creatures it nourishes. The planet itself becomes an entity.”

  I said nothing, just rolled my eyes.

  “I know some things that you do not, Dr. Burleigh,” she said with a touch of heat that brought a bit more French into her accent. I kind of liked that. “And this is one of them: Gaea is real, she is the All-Mother, your mother. Your mother loves you. She will heal you if you will let her.”

  I was struck by the sincerity and deep belief in her voice. But that wasn't enough. I could not accept her Gaea.

  And I knew I was on her holy ground.

  “Call me Will,” I said to change the subject.

  “No,” she said. “I will c
all you Cecil.”

  “Forget it!”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling now. “You are Cecil until you learn to see.”

  Swell. I'd always hated that name.

  Around us the trees were thinning enough to allow glimpses of the sun. From its angle I gathered that we were presently traveling northwest.

  “All right,” I said. “So we're going in search of these tines. What's so special about them?”

  “They are hidden in four places, and the tines you will find in those places have not been touched by another living creature for ages. Once you take and hold one, it will become yours forever.”

  “‘For ages,’ eh? How come?”

  “They are ancient, from another time, forged by another race. Their locations are secret. And even after you know the locations, the tines are not easy to reach.”

  I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that.

  We wound along a sloping path until the trees abruptly disappeared, leaving us in the open.

  “Here we are,” Maya said.

  I expected to see a clearing, but instead an open pit gaped before us. I got out and walked to the edge. It looked as if a giant angry fist had punched into the crust of the mountainside, leaving a rough hole about a hundred feet across. A meteor, maybe? Or just some sort of sink hole. I peered over the edge. Ragged sandstone walls dropped a good fifty feet to the sloping, sand-covered floor.

  “You're going to tell me the tines are down there, aren't you.”

  “Only one of them. There's a little cave at the bottom that—”

  “You really expect me to go down there?”

  “You must. How else will you find your first harmonic?” She stared into the pit. “I was hoping it had rained here, but apparently the storms stayed on the other side of the mountains. This will make it more difficult.”

  More difficult? Not what I wanted to hear. I considered those steep walls and didn't like what I saw.

  “Look, I'm not a mountain climber. There's no way I can make it to the bottom.”

  “You had almost no sleep last night. Do you not feel strong enough today?”

  “I'm okay that way. I just—”

  “Are you afraid of heights?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Good. Because we must stay on schedule.”

  “What schedule?”

  “You must have all your tines before the full moon.”

  “What's the full moon got to do with it?”

  “You will see. Come,” she said, turning away. “Help me.”

  I followed her back to the Jeep and might have been more interested in the sway of her hips beneath her huipil if that pit hadn't been yawning behind me. I helped her haul a long coil of half-inch rope from under my duffel.

  I grunted as I hefted it onto my shoulder. “How long is this?”

  “Almost two hundred feet.”

  She pulled a cloth sack from the Jeep and together we returned to the edge. I dropped the rope near an ocote pine and peeked again into the pit. I felt my insides begin to constrict. How was I going to do this?

  I licked dry lips. “Where's that cave you mentioned?”

  “Straight down from here,” she said. “Because the sand is dry, it is best to approach the cave from directly above.”

  “How many people do this?”

  “Very, very few. It is a secret place.”

  “You've been down there?”

  She nodded. “Many years ago.”

  “What's the problem with the sand being dry?”

  “If you disturb it too much, it will start sliding into the cave mouth.”

  “And that's bad?”

  “It will seal the cave until the next rain.”

  I took a deep, anxious breath. I didn't want to do this, but couldn't bring myself to tell Maya I was too scared to try. Especially since she'd already been down and back.

  Male pride—it's a hell of a burden.

  She began looping the rope around my waist.

  “This will keep you from falling.”

  I liked that idea. Maybe this wouldn't be too bad.

  She secured it with some sort of non-slip knot, then reached into her bag and brought out a flashlight and two pairs of sturdy-looking work gloves. She clipped the flashlight to my belt, then handed me the larger pair of gloves.

  “To protect your hands on the climb.”

  I pulled them over my sweaty palms. It was hot out there in the direct sunlight, but that wasn't why my palms were wet.

  Maya slipped into her own gloves, then freed a length of rope from the coil and wound it around the trunk of the pine.

  “Ready?” she said.

  No, I was not ready. Not even close to ready. Every neuron in my body, especially the more primitive ones in the hindbrain where selfpreservation was the prime directive, screamed in protest. They thought they were still part of the old safe-and-sane Will Burleigh who'd never be part of a crazy stunt like this. But I'd left the old Will behind in New York. The new Will was damned if he wasn't going to live differently.

  On the edge . . . very literally.

  I can do this, I told myself. Maya did it. So can I.

  Steeling myself against a rush of vertigo, I knelt on the edge and slipped my foot over. I found a toehold, paused for a deep breath, then lowered myself over and began my descent.

  The first ten feet or so were rough going, and I was glad Maya had supplied me with gloves—the practice of internal medicine does not exactly prepare hands for clinging to rock. After that the wall sloped outward at a slight angle which made it easier to see where to put my feet.

  Maya was leaving about two feet of slack in the rope. I learned that the hard way when my foot slipped and I lost my grip. I heard myself cry out in panic as I began to drop—but I fell only two feet before the rope snapped taught, cinching tight around my waist. I spun 180 degrees, bumping the back of my head against the rock.

  “Are you all right?” I heard Maya call from above.

  “Yeah,” I said, dizzy and hurting as I frantically turned myself around and clutched at the sandstone. “Fine. Just a little slip.”

  I found a new perch on the wall, waited for my taching heart to slow, then continued down.

  Somehow I managed to reach the bottom without catastrophe.

  “I'm here!” I shouted.

  I saw Maya's face appear over the ledge above. She smiled. “Wonderful. Stay right there while I send more of the rope down.”

  Almost immediately a seemingly endless length of rope began to snake over the rim and collect in a coil at my feet.

  I looked around. The sandy floor of the pit sloped up and away from me at a good thirty-degree angle. The sand seemed to funnel down to a point a dozen feet to my right. I stepped away from the wall and spotted a dark crescent in the sandstone, maybe two feet high at its widest point. That had to be the cave mouth she'd mentioned.

  I wiped my dripping face with my sleeve. Not a whiff of a breeze down here, and with sun directly overhead, the floor of the pit was like a giant wok.

  The rope finally stopped falling, but a length still trailed up the pit wall. Maya's face appeared again.

  “I have fastened the other end up here. Leave the rope tied about your waist.”

  “Why?”

  “So you do not get lost in the cave.”

  Lost? How big was this cave?

  “All right,” I called. “You're the boss.”

  “Stay close to the wall as you approach the cave mouth,” she said. “Disturb the sand as little as possible. And once inside, stay to the right. That path will take you to the tines.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “And remember, touch only one tine, the tine you will take and make your own. Leave the others alone.”

  With my back brushing the rock, I sidled along the wall to the mouth of the cave and peered inside. Dark as a grave in there. I went back and dragged the coils of rope to the mouth. The idea of an umbilical cord to the outside was looking
better all the time.

  I crouched and slid my feet toward the opening. Despite the heat, a chill of foreboding rippled over my skin at the thought of allowing myself to be swallowed by that hole. Who knew what was in there?

  I pulled out my flashlight and aimed it through but the sun was too bright for me to make out any details.

  Then I noticed the sand I'd disturbed starting to slide into the opening. I figured I'd better get moving before I disturbed some more. I entered feet-first on my belly.

  More sand followed me inside and I noticed that the floor of the cave continued the slope of the pit. Maya had said to stay to the right and that was the way I rolled.

  I sat up and brushed myself off, watching with mounting unease as the sand continued to slide into the opening, further narrowing the crescent of sunlight it admitted. Finally the sand slowed and stopped. I was relieved to see that I still had enough room to get out.

  I closed my eyes to speed their adjustment to the darkness. At least it was cool in here, almost cold compared to the floor of the pit. When I opened my eyes again and played my flashlight beam along the walls, I saw that I was in a small chamber. A few large stalactites hung from the ceiling, but the sandy floor before me was smooth as baby's skin. No tracks other than my own. That was encouraging—I could safely assume that I wouldn't be running into any animals in here.

  The chamber connected to a pair of tunnels; the one on the left was larger and ran steeply downward into yawning blackness. The one to the right had only a slight decline.

  I started along the right. The ceiling of the tunnel gradually lowered until I was walking in a crouch, and then crawling on my hands and knees. It widened eventually into a chamber some twenty feet across—a blind chamber with a rutted ceiling only slightly higher than the tunnel's.

  I squatted on my haunches and looked around, puzzled. I knew Maya had said stay to the right, and I had, but there was nothing here. Had I missed a side passage somewhere?

  I was about to turn and go back when I noticed a darker area in the shadow behind one of the ceiling ruts. I crawled over for a closer look at what I assumed was a pocket recess and instead found a twofoot opening in the ceiling. I shone may flashlight inside and saw a narrow passage running upward at a steep angle for a couple of feet, then making a sharp turn . . . to where?