Black Sun: A Thriller (36 page)

The computer ran the sensor analysis and confirmed the signal.

“San Ignacio,” he said, looking at the map. “They’re hiding in San Ignacio.”

A
rnold Moore remained at Yucca Mountain deep into the night, running simulations on a program his technicians had put together. The simulation had confirmed Stecker’s theory. The stones and their energy waves were intrinsically linked to the weakening magnetic field, but no matter how Moore tinkered with the variables, the numbers did not match up. Close, but slightly off.

Using assumptions the NRI had come up with, he changed the inputs several times. The numbers skewed slightly high.

He changed them again.

The numbers were off to the low side.

Frustrated, Moore ordered the simulation to do a reverse analysis, to take the actual data and back out to what the numbers should be.

He waited. The screen flashed.

Operational parameter invalid
.

Something in the equation was preventing the operation, like dividing by zero.

Moore typed.
Suggested parameter adjustment?

The computer ran through a series of calculations and then offered its best guess.

Parameter with highest likelihood of successful adjustment: Number of Magnetic Fields
.

Moore stared at the blinking cursor.
Number of Magnetic Fields. What the hell could that mean?

Sliding a pair of reading glasses back onto his nose, he clicked over to the input page and scrolled through all of the preset parameters. Among them he found a box to input number of magnetic fields. It currently was set at 1.

Moore looked around, feeling foolish. Could there be more than one magnetic field? The program came from the North Pole survey group; it was designed to calculate the speed and magnitude of future changes. Moore’s people had modified it to assess the impact of the stones.

The stones
.

Could they be considered their own magnetic field? Moore looked over his glasses and changed the number to 2. He then designated the output for field number two to match the believed power level of the stones. Hitting
ENTER
, he ran the reverse query again.

The screen blinked.
Operational parameter invalid
.

“Damn,” he cursed.

He went back and changed the number to 3. The computer asked for the strength of the third field and Moore had no answer. He typed “X” and hit
ENTER
.

The computer began to think. It was connected to a group of mainframes and networked through an advanced system of processing that one of the NRI’s former member companies had developed. Working together, the mainframes had the power of a supercomputer. But by entering “X,” Moore had created a massive need for
calculating power. And as he stared at the nonresponsive screen, Moore wondered if he’d crashed the system.

After several minutes, Moore sighed. He was about to give up when the screen flashed. A series of numbers came up relating to field strength, where the pole was, and where it should be. Moore studied the numbers. They matched exactly.

If the computer was right, they were dealing with not one earthbound magnetic field but three.

P
rofessor McCarter found himself struggling once again. Beneath the exposed bulbs in the church’s wine cellar, he found he could not focus.

He sat back and looked at the notes he’d written so far, from glyphs he’d already translated.
These were the words of the Fallen Jaguar, the last of the Brotherhood. I write them in the language that is no more
.

He guessed that this was the author of the scroll, and that the language he referred to was the hieroglyphics of the Maya.

McCarter glanced at his next line of notes. He could see his own handwriting deteriorating. He noticed his hand shaking visibly now, but it must have been doing so even then.

In their wisdom the gods gave the four stones to the first people, the Wooden People. After the great storm, the falling of the Black Rain, only the Brotherhood remained to carry the secret
.

McCarter was certain that this referred to the Mayan creation story, in which the gods of the Maya tried to bring forth the human work. After several failed tries they used wood as the catalyst in the effort and succeeded,
creating beings that looked somewhat like humans but were more like stick people, with deformed bodies and dry cracking faces.

Some scholars said these people were actually monkeys who ended up living in the trees, but McCarter had always rejected that notion, as the Wooden People were never described to have fur, or tails, or any type of grace or athleticism. Instead they were said to be ungainly and weak. Much more like the body they had found in the cave below the Amazon temple. The body of a human from the future.

And if he was right, after the Wooden People were killed in the storm and the flood, the regular people, whom they seemed to have exercised control over, left, fleeing the Amazon and heading north. Most of these people, and indeed the legend itself, gloried in the destruction of the Wooden People. But the Brotherhood, perhaps a group of priests or acolytes, knew better. They had taken the stones that were accessible and brought them on a journey, several journeys to be exact, and placed them as they’d been told.

The Sacrifice of the Heart remains at Zuyua
.

This was the Brazil stone, which he and Danielle had found two years earlier.

The Sacrifice of the Mind has followed the sun, over the great sea
.

McCarter guessed this was the Russian stone. The one they had yet to look for.

To the Temple of the Initiation was taken the Sacrifice of the Soul, and the last went to the mountains. Here I have placed it: The master stone, The Sacrifice of the
Body lies beneath the Mirror, in the Temple of the Jaguar
.

The Brotherhood, the regular humans from the current time period, stretched all the way back to the original shrine in Brazil. It made sense. The travelers from earth’s future appeared weak and deformed; they needed help, assistance. They could not be expected to do the task alone. They must have recruited certain members in secret, and thus the Brotherhood was formed.

McCarter gazed at his notes, pleased that the past made sense now, but he realized that nothing he’d found would tell him what they really needed to know: what they should do now.

Feeling dizzy, he went back to translating.

He leaned over the hieroglyphic book and a drop of sweat fell from his face and hit the parchment. He dabbed the parchment with a towel, wiped his face, and studied the next group of symbols.

One for the earth, the land. One that represented healing, and another that he’d come to realize indicated the stones.

Would the stones heal the earth? And from what?

He leaned forward again, studying a glyph that represented men or mankind or the human kind. Another glyph represented nature, the earth in a sense, and a third glyph represented darkness. He had seen glyphs before that signified that nature would destroy man, as when a volcano erupted or an earthquake flattened a village, but here the order was reversed. Could it mean what he thought it meant? So much of the prophecy, especially as it was treated today, seemed to indicate nature destroying man, but this was different: The parchment
in front of him suggested that man destroys nature. Was the catastrophe not natural in origin but in fact man-made? Or was it his liberal prejudices coming out? He remembered a debate with a conservative friend who told him he put trees ahead of people. He could not be sure, but the words were there.

His eyes blurred suddenly, watering and burning. His body ached. He wrote his notes and looked to the next set of glyphs. They seemed familiar to him, in fact he was certain he knew them, but he could not divine a meaning. It was an odd sensation, like not being able to recall the name of someone you knew well. He traced the outline of the first one with his finger, hoping it would jog his memory, but nothing came to him. He drew it with his shaky hand but still his mind was blank.

A jolt of anger and frustration hit him. It was almost impossible to do what he was trying to do without a database, or at least his old notebooks or an anthology of known glyphs. But he had nothing to work with, nothing but his failing memory.

He sat back again. Despite the warmth of the wine cellar he now had the chills. He was running a fever and as often happened to the patient whose temperature rises rapidly, he’d begun to feel as if he were freezing.

He held the towel to his face. He felt as if he might throw up.

He put a hand to his leg and touched the outlines of his wound. It was hot, burning with infection once again, swollen and painful to the touch.

What had he done?

In a vain, desperate effort to hear his wife’s voice again, he’d stopped taking the medications Danielle had
been giving him. The sickness had brought his wife to him once, or so he’d thought: the sickness and the stone, the conduit through time. But as he’d become well, her face had vanished; her voice no longer touched his mind. It was like waking from a dream and wishing only to go back to sleep and find it somehow. And McCarter could not bring himself to let that happen.

In response he’d shunned the antibiotics in hopes of seeing her again. But the only result was a growing fever and a cloudy mind just when they all needed it to be sharp.

A
t the celebration, Father Domingo made a great fuss over Hawker and Danielle. The women of the town found it hard to believe Danielle could be happy in her thirties without having a husband. They insisted she dance with a few of the men, and then, realizing she had come with Hawker, they made it a point to get them dancing and drinking as much as possible.

By midnight the celebration had begun to wind down and Hawker and Danielle found themselves alone in an alleyway outside the guesthouse.

They leaned against the building and looked at each other.

Hawker found himself both captivated by her and concerned. The events of recent days flashed through his head and, strangely, Arnold Moore’s arrival in Africa settled in his mind.

“A peso for your thoughts,” Danielle asked.

He hesitated. “Just thinking about something Moore said to me in Africa,” he told her.

“And what might that be?”

“By the pricking in my thumbs,” he said, “something wicked this way comes.”

“Bradbury?”

He shook his head. “It’s from
Macbeth
, actually.”

“Shakespeare?” She smiled. “You surprise me.”

“I know a thing or two.”

“So it would seem,” she said. “You feel like Macbeth?”

“The witches said those words to him, after he became a traitor and murdered the king,” Hawker said.

“You’re not a traitor or a murderer,” she said, “and Arnold Moore certainly doesn’t think so.”

He guessed that she was right. Certainly Moore had hired him to save the thing he valued most in this world, Danielle. “There are those who would disagree,” he said to her, “but even that’s not what I’m getting at. Macbeth was a loyal soldier, a general who crushes the king’s enemies until the witches stir up his ambition and ego by telling him that he would soon become king himself. The question is, would he have done anything had they just kept their damned mouths shut?”

She guessed his line of thought. “You’re thinking about the stones and us, and the parchment Father Domingo had. Afraid we’re doing the witch’s bidding?”

“I don’t believe in destiny,” he said. “But people can be manipulated into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t.”

She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “Fate and destiny don’t have to be an evil thing. Where would I be, if you hadn’t come into my life?”

He studied her. So much in his world was darkness, but somehow she was like the light. The flickering glow from the fire bathed her face, laying shadows and mystery across her skin. A strand of dark hair had fallen across her eyes.

Hawker reached out to put it back behind her ear. He didn’t pull his hand away, and she didn’t ask him to. Instead he ran the tips of his fingers down the side of her face, softly brushing her cheek. She turned toward it, then looked back up at him as he leaned in and kissed her.

She kissed him back, pressing her lips into his. He could taste the wine on her tongue, feel the warmth of her breath in his mouth.

They kissed hard, then parted, looking into each other’s eyes for a second. He laced his fingers through her hair, placing his hand behind her neck, and cradled the back of her head. She closed her eyes and moved toward him again.

In a moment they were sitting on a stone bench with no backrest, facing each other, their legs straddling the bench. They were hidden in an alcove in a quiet alleyway. She kissed him again and rubbed her face against his, the soft skin of her cheek moving across his, the smell of her hair and the perfume of the night around them adding to the intoxication.

Holding her mesmerized him. It wasn’t as if he’d been waiting for her; there’d been plenty of women in various places. They had been comfort on hard nights, a chance to forget the hell that life sometimes was. But this was different. It felt like breathing again after drowning, a chance to rediscover what made life worth living.

He pulled her close, his fingers tracing the smooth curve of her neck, sliding down to the top of her back, to the top button on her dress. He opened it.

She traced a finger across his chest, leaning in and kissing him again. His hand slid down the side of her
neck, across her shoulder, and down the smooth skin of her back. And then he stopped.

He pulled back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at him. Her hair was a mess, her eyes half open.