The Festival of Bones: Mythworld Book One

by James A. Owen

  “Yes?”

  Michael bit his lip, deciding if he ought to ask. “Your parents, Jude—what happened to them?”

  Jude smiled, and it was not the smile that Michael had seen before, but a cold, feral, smile.

  “I changed their reality.”

  Michael dropped his arm, and together, they walked to the car in silence.

  * * *

  “Why did you have to take us to Yugoslavia to explain your theory about inversions?” Galen asked as they pulled up at Jude’s villa in the Wienerwald. “Couldn’t you have just as easily explained all of this here in Vienna?”

  Jude nodded as he opened the door. “I could have. But thus far, I have asked you to accept a great deal of fantastic information as reality based on little more than thrice-told tales, a single manuscript which you both have predispositions to accepting as authentic, and a flawed memory of a child’s poem. Before we can proceed to the next step, I wanted to be able to present you with physical evidence of an inversion.

  “Three months ago, an archaeological team from the University of Utah was doing a survey of Lepinski Vir, and received a permit to do some minor excavations. They didn’t expect to find anything unusual. They did.”

  He reached into the inner breast pocket of his coat and withdrew a smallish item, which he held up and examined in the moonlight. “They assumed that this was merely something left behind by previous expeditions, but the stratum at which it was found screamed otherwise—nevertheless, it would have been discarded, except for the attentions given it by one of the students. She managed to smuggle it out of the country—small matter, as it didn’t look like archaeological contraband—and then, a few weeks ago, had it carbon-dated.”

  “What happened?” Michael asked, not certain he wanted to hear the answer. “How old is it?”

  “I’ll put it this way,” said Jude. “When the report was filed, I found out about it less than two days later, and just in time—less than thirty hours after that, the building in Utah which housed the department and research lab burned to the ground. The team has been scattered to the academic winds, and the student herself has disappeared. Only this remains.”

  Jude stepped out of the car, then turned and pressed the item into Michael’s hand. “According to the carbon testing, this thing is almost eighteen thousand years old.”

  With that, he turned on his heel, and in moments, had disappeared into the thickening night air.

  Galen watched the younger man leave, then moved to Michael’s side. “What is it Langbein? What did he give you?”

  Slowly, Michael opened his hand and revealed an object supposedly three times as old as the settlement itself—an engraved silver mechanism, complete with a glass faceplate. There were six hands, all pointing at a variety of glyphs arranged in three concentric arcs, with intersecting lines set on a separate revolving plate. On the back was a larger glyph which resembled a Chinese Dragon carved into the soft untarnished metal. On the edges were several alternating indentations and protruding bars, the largest of which was slightly grooved, and about a quarter of an inch long.

  Looking bewilderingly at Michael, Galen reached across and gave the grooved bar a twist, then, intuitively, pressed it downward.

  The objects’ innards made a small grinding noise, then two of the hands sprang to life. Galen watched as Michael pressed it to his ear and then gasped with astonishment.

  “What? What is it?”

  “This eighteen-thousand year old watch,” said Michael, goggle-eyed. “It’s ticking.”

  ***

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Anabasis Machine

  “So,” Galen began, as he took a seat opposite Jude in the latter’s laboratory, “we thought we had a history book, and it turns out we discovered the end of the world.”

  “One of the ends of the world, “ Michael corrected from the back of the room, where he was examining a large piece of machinery that looked like a Muppet version of a nuclear reactor. It had six arms sticking out of it like control rods, but they curved back to the machine in overlapping loops. The center was a vacuum cleaner—or what passed for one, anyway. He thought it was cute, but probably expensive—then wondered if it cost anywhere near what he constantly paid out for pieces of moldy paper.

  Jude waved both of them down, apologizing. “I think that’s my fault—I didn’t mean to imply that the end of a Calendar Round meant the actual end of the world—far from it, in fact. For the Maya, the zero day, even on the Calendar Round, did not necessarily mean destruction—sometimes it really was just a transition, which may have meant anything from two spectral worlds passing in the night, to a merging of certain aspects, to, well, destruction.”

  “Then what is it you expect is going to happen soon?” Michael said. “A movie, or a catastrophe?”

  “It’s impossible to say with any exactness—but my theory is this: I think that the destructive inversions only occur on the big conjunctions, which is to say when a full turn of the Long Count coincides with other Calendar Rounds.

  “When the conjunction involves lesser arcs, there is perhaps a transference of aspects, like aluminum ending up in ancient China.”

  “Or coelacanth in a lake in Tibet,” put in Michael.

  “Exactly,” said Jude. “And then there is the one I think is the most frequent—the inversions where, for the period of the transition, the two worlds are visible to one another. It may be for an instant, or for a year—but during that time, there is an awareness of an … otherness. That is what I believe makes up most of the books in Meru—chronicles of viewed inversions.”

  “Ah,” said Galen, “The record of Londonium in a half-million year old document.”

  “Yes. And that’s what I think we may have in the Prime Edda as well.”

  “I still can’t quite visualize the whole inversion concept,” said Michael. “It’s a little out of my normal range of reading.”

  Jude thought a moment, then reached into a desk and removed a sheet of paper, and a pair of scissors. He cut a long strip from the sheet, about an inch wide and seventeen inches long, then placed the ends together after putting an inverted twist in the strip. He separated the ends about one-quarter inch, then fastened it with clear tape.

  “Take this,” he said.

  “A Moebius strip,” said Michael.

  “An infinity sign,” said Galen.

  “Very good, and both correct,” said Jude. “All along we have been talking about the possibility of the Kairos’ Long Count being cyclical, which actually defies the point of a Long Count, which is supposed to be limitless, non-linear objective time. The perception also depends on time being circular. But consider—if Time were not in fact a circle, but a Moebius loop, then there is created the possibility of times overlapping. The endpoints are fluid, and truly nonlinear.

  “The real breakthrough concept is as I said earlier—the Zero Point is not a point, but an actual transition period, as in the Mayan calendar. That’s represented here by the gap in the tape. So let us say that the Maya are at the endpoint gap, and underneath on the reverse of the loop is 1890’s Chicago. If the two times truly overlapped, then would it be possible to make contact?”

  “Possibly,” said Galen.

  “Then if so, it’s no longer so outrageous to think the Maya actually performed brain surgery—they could have, because they may have learned if from watching us.”

  “It’s not right,” said Michael. “It doesn’t work.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Maybe. May I?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Now,” said Michael, cutting the tape from the Moebius loop, “I don’t think it’s a gap per se, or else you’d be overlapping with the bottom half of the loop, too. I think it’s more like this,” he finished, handing the paper to Jude.

  Michael had taped the ends together, then added a free-floating loop of tape to the strip. “See? This way, it actually works. The paper itself represents Kairos, and there
are no endpoints to Kairos. But there are cycles—represented by the tape—and to pinpoint an inversion, you simply have to determine at what point the tape will be encompassing both times.”

  “But the model still doesn’t work,” said Galen, “because Kairos is supposed to be so large it is essentially nonlinear—and that means overlapping times would happen at intervals so broad that the experiment is rendered insignificant.”

  “Try this then,” said Jude. He cut ten more strips off of the paper, and taped them into Moebius strips. But instead of fixing the ends, he attached them one inch back on one side—which he then attached to a different strip.

  When he was finished, Jude had a chain of connected Moebius strips, each of which represented a Long Count—and by connecting them, he ensured that it was essentially cyclical.

  “How does that strike you?” Jude asked.

  Michael stepped to the table and looked at the construct, then reached out and took the loop of tape. It still moved freely over a single inverted loop, but could also break through the tape and move onto another one, and another, and another.

  “Amazing,” said Michael.

  “Spectacular,” said Galen.

  “There we go,” said Jude. “I knew you two would be able to get it.”

  “What?” said Galen, irritated. “You knew all of this?”

  “Of course he did,” said Michael. “It’s his field and his theory, remember?’

  “Yes,” said Jude, “but I wanted you to arrive at it yourselves, to see how it worked, because I want your help.”

  “With what?’

  “We’re going to do it,” said Jude. “We’re going to view an inversion.”

  * * *

  “I’ve been working on applying the theory behind this paper representation to a practical use,” said Jude, “and this is just the kind of experiment that might work. I’ve constructed a machine which can analyze the Mandelbrot Set and use the repeating patterns to correlate data—it ought to work in a similar fashion for our inversion.”

  “The Mandelbrot Set—Fractal mathematics? That’s the basis for your device?” Michael asked.

  “The beginnings of it, or at least the beginnings of my interest in deriving ordered systems out of chaotic information.

  “It operates on principles of Chaos Theory—it has to, really. There is very little in conventional physics with which to conceive, much less describe or build such a device.”

  “You can’t describe it?”

  “Not how it works—not without ten-foot-thick books of equations and notations. But I can describe it—I call it the Anabasis Machine.”

  “Anabasis?”

  “A special word—it defines itself, its opposite, and something in between. It means to go forward, to retreat, and to remain where you are, all at once.”

  “How apt,” Galen remarked dryly.

  “What does it look like?” asked Michael.

  “You ought to know,” Jude said smugly. “You were leaning on it.”

  “The Muppet?”

  “The very same.”

  The three moved to the far side of the room and examined the odd device. “It doesn’t look like much,” said Galen.

  “I hope to change your mind on that,” Jude replied, grinning, “because the bill for it is on the upcoming departmental budget.”

  “How much?”

  Jude quoted a figure, and the Rector went white. Michael smiled broadly. “Gee,” he said clapping Galen on the back. “I don’t feel so bad about my million-dollar Kleenex anymore.”

  * * *

  Jude gave them instructions on the material that he would need to calculate the inversion. He had been entering the primary data—Mayan, Aztec, Sumerian, Anasazi, Tibetan, and a dozen other calendars—as well as several thousand calculations which had kept his department running full speed ahead for the better part of the year. The only pieces missing were orientation points, which were best derived from the Edda—and Michael was the best one for that particular job.

  They agreed to meet the next night to try the experiment, and Jude walked Michael to the door alone—he apparently wanted Galen to remain there for some sort of private discussion.

  Probably about that upcoming budget, Michael figured. The night was a bit chill, but the thought of being the second biggest spender at the University kept him warm all the way home.

  * * *

  Arms laden with transcribed figures and dates, Michael showed up at Jude’s office just before six the next evening. Galen was already there, seated, a drink in his hand, and a curious expression on his face.

  Michael traded the stack for a drink (creme soda), and sat in the chair by the desk while Jude went to the Anabasis Machine and entered the information into a small keypad on the side of the device.

  An hour passed, then two. And then:

  “I have it,” said Jude.

  Michael and Galen set down their drinks and hurried over to the time Muppet. “Well?” they asked in unison.

  Jude produced one of his trademark plum notecards and raised an eyebrow. “We were right,” he said softly. “There is a convergence point in the Edda which correlates to our own time. It’s a small one, but it’s there.”

  “When? When is it?”

  Jude turned the notecard around and showed them the final date produced by the Anabasis Machine.

  August twenty-sixth—not three weeks away.

  “I knew it!” exclaimed Galen, smacking his fist into his other hand. “I knew it!”

  “Odin’s beard…” said Michael.

  “Who wants to meet Alberich?” said Jude.

  * * *

  There was no way to be certain how long the inversion would last, or what degree of intensity it would manifest. It was decided that all three would go to Bayreuth on the day at hand, and withhold any announcements regarding the Edda until then. That way, if nothing spectacular happened, they would still have a historically important document to present to the world at large in a sympathetic venue; and if something truly did happen, then they would still be in a position to explain and control the perceptions of those around them—not to mention the unspoken hope that Bayreuth, of all places, would be the ideal platform from which to view the Eddaic histories unfolding.

  It was at this point that all three came to different conclusions as to the proper ending of the phrase, “Best laid plans …”

  * * *

  The notice fluttered to the ground as Michael was preparing to unlock the door to his University office: the Rector requests a meeting—immediately. Hm, thought Michael. It must have something to do with the trip, now only three days off. He had a full schedule, but supposed he could make a few minutes to attend to whatever it was Galen needed. He stuck his key in the door—and found it wouldn’t turn.

  The lock had been changed.

  That was only the first shock of many to come.

  His lecture room wasn’t locked, but there was a scheduled class, and the empty room should have been full of students.

  The secretaries, usually quite pleasant, avoided his eyes and whispered in his wake as he passed.

  One of the Social Sciences professors spit on him as he walked into the administrative courtyard, but he had always been a jerk.

  The Rector’s secretary gave him a distasteful look, then buzzed him into the office.

  Michael knocked on the heavy oak door. “Hello? You asked to see me, Rector Gunnar-Galen?”

  “Oh, please shut up, Langbein,” said Galen irritably. “Come in and close the door.”

  Michael shut the door and sat in the expensive purple leather wingback opposite Galen’s desk. He looked at his erstwhile companion, and decided that the surroundings suited him. The brocade cloak on the coat-rack, the Edda manuscript on the desk, the Byzantine sculptures which he had inherited with the job; the new office fit the ostentatious air Galen usually carried with him—but not today.

  Galen wore a look that was hard to quantify—part fatigue, part
anger, and part … bliss?

  He dropped a heavy file on the desk in front of Michael.

  “You’re being let go,” he said with an air of finality. “The Senate agreed to let me tell you to avoid a scandal.”

  “This is a joke, right?” Michael said nervously. “Is Jude here?”

  “Jude’s not here, it’s not a joke, and if I were you, I might be thinking about getting a lawyer,” said Galen gravely.

  Michael began to stammer. He couldn’t fathom what he was hearing. “W-Why, Galen? W-What’s happened?”

  Galen tapped the thick folder. “You recognize it?”

  “Yes—that’s my acquisitions file,” said Michael.

  “We just finished the budget review,” said Galen, “and someone decided to look through your file. Do you know what they found?”

  “No. I don’t know what can be wrong, Galen, I swear it.”

  Galen looked at him darkly and flipped open the folder.

  Michael leaned forward and scanned the agendas, then his face lit up in horror.

  There were two ledger entries for every piece acquired by the Department of Ancient Literature and Historical studies—one for the actual cost of the item, and one for the amount Michael had requisitioned. The numbers in the second column were considerably larger than the first, and there were correlating receipts for every entry.

  “This, this, this, this can’t possibly be right!” Michael cried. “Galen, I don’t know what’s going on here, but …”

  “I’m sorry,” said Galen. “It’s already been decided.”

  He stood and stuck his hand out at Michael. “Good luck, Michael.”

  Dazed, Michael shook his hand and stumbled out of the office. It wasn’t until an hour or so later, as he was sitting on the giant ferris wheel at the Prater, trying to figure out the shattering inversion which had just struck his life, that he realized it was the first time Galen had ever called him Michael.

  * * *

  The next day, Michael wandered around Vienna, drinking coffee and wondering if he ought to flee the country. He considered going to see Jude, but after the response of other faculty members at the University, he was afraid of the reception he might get. He also rather hoped Jude had not heard about it at all—for some reason, he’d rather Jude think well of him than admit the quandary he was in.