Brian D'Amato

by In the Courts of the Sun

  “They’re in the videoconference facility,” a woman’s voice said. It came from a sort of hostess or secretary who’d materialized from somewhere and who turned out to be Ashley1. She led Marena, Boyle, and me around the desk and through a door on the left into a paneled hallway. It led away from the field and into the depths of the Hyperdoughnut around it. A single door was open at the far end and we tromped through into a big, dimly lit cube-shaped conference room, windowless but with big white velvet curtains all over. There were clear plastic drop cloths over the eggshell wall-to-wall. We squeaked across to the far door.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Laurence said. “When we get it cleaned up and bring in the hospitality team … well, it’s gonna be pretty special.” He opened the door and led us into a second meeting cube bigger than the first. It was covered with badly painted murals of Pleistocene life, fruited plains teeming with megatheria, glyptodonts, phororhaci, and nuclear families of suspiciously Caucasoid early hominids. The far wall also featured an olde-timey-looking map of the Western Hemisphere, with a line in gold enamel that I guessed represented the route of the Jaredites, winding from Chesapeake Bay down into Central America. We all squeaked across the room to yet another door. It led directly into a third conference cube.

  This one was smaller than the others, only about a thousand square feet. Something’s weird about this place. Oh. I see. Yeah. The walls, the ceiling, the padded floor, the square conference table, and even the mostly empty Aerons all seemed to be slightly translucent, like they were made out of the same dark frosted glass. I guessed the stuff was some kind of wraparound video cell-film, so that if you put a specially modified VR program on the giant seamless plasma screens that made up the walls, ceiling, and floor, the surfaces of the furniture would key themselves to it and practically vanish so that you could feel like you were floating goggleless through a desert sunset or an underwater ice cave or a beloved episode of Dawson’s Creek or whatever. Right now three of the walls were running what must have been meant to be a soothing screensaver, misty ripples of blue-gray smoke over dark green, and there were just four scattered windows open on the wall facing us. The smallest and leftmost was running another news shot of troubles on the subcontinent. The second, bigger window showed a rotating computer-rendered image of a Sleeker, an advanced-looking sport shoe with oddly fat, tractionless soles. The biggest window was a sort of digital 3-D diorama. It looked like a real window facing out on an unnaturally still woodland landscape. Two glowy angels floated between the trees in the upstage left, and down center a man in black knelt with his back to the picture plane: the prophet, Joseph Smith.

  Four post-middle-age Caucasian males sat at the near side of the table, pecking at nearly untouched plates of bran muffins and fruit cubes. There were also pots and mugs of what was undoubtedly herbal tea, and a chocolate layer cake, also apparently untouched, skewered with a single burnt-out sparkler. One of the men’s heads was bald, one was silver, one was not quite bald and had an unemphatic goatee, and the fourth and youngest, which was talking, had a thin coating of short tan setae.

  “… the main thing with Sleekers is you don’t need ice,” Tan Head was saying in an avuncular voice. “They move like in-lines. On almost any smooth surface. But they’re lighter and they brake better. So you’ve got your speed, but you can also dig in deep and really launch that ball.”

  “And the kids are, they’re already taking to this?” Bald asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Tan said. “In fact, it’ll feel like it started out as an underground sport. Like snowboarding. A real homegrown trend with a high-octane mixture of team spirit and individualism. I visualize the game as having the one-for-all feeling of football plus the zany characters of pro wrestling.”

  “But it’s not going to be fixed like wrestling?”

  “No, of course not,” Tan said. “It’s a real, demanding sport.”

  “Hold up a second,” Bald said. He stood up and slowly turned thirty degrees to look at us. The other three men swung their chairs around and, as one, struggled up onto their hind legs.

  “Don’t get up,” Marena said. “Please. Okay, never mind.” She edged around the table, sort of hugged the Tan Head Guy, and half-hugged or shook hands with the others. Laurence did the same, minus the hugging. I took my hat off. I still forgot to take it off indoors sometimes. I was still wearing the jacket I’d had on during the attack, newly dry-cleaned in the Stake’s on-premises plant, and I even had on a tie, an ancient J. C. Penney funčbrerie on loan from the family of Saints next door at the motel, so I felt marginally respectable. But to these people I still probably looked like the Frito Bandito.

  Marena steered me into the group and introduced me to Bald first. His name was Elder Snow and he was totally hairless down to the lack of eyebrows and lashes. I wasn’t even sure he had fingernails. He shook my hand with a pretty strong grip, for a wraith. The next one was about sixty and named Ezra Hatch. He had the creepy Tenexed helmet of silver hair and a sort of peachy Palm Beachy resorty sport jacket and slacks. And under that, probably, Jesus jammies. He gooshed my hand like we were old roommates at business school. The goatee guy was named Orson something. He was in a Warren sweatshirt. They were all pretty friendly. Wait. Let’s be more specific: One felt that their default position was the usual overfamiliar joviality—which is what people in the U.S. have instead of manners—but it was hampered by current events. We were still in that awkward period after a big disaster when everyone feels like he’s supposed to be sympathetic and grave but just doesn’t feel it.

  Lindsay Warren was the tan-headed one, the one who’d been speaking. He also turned out to be the tallest. He took three steps toward us, limping badly from what I’d bet five to one was a football injury. It was practically an obligatory accessory for middle-age Utah businessmen. Walk a few blocks down Temple Street on a Sunday and I guarantee that at least three not-yet-old Longjohn Silvers will hobble past you on their way to salvation. He was wearing Warren-green cross trainers and a UNICEF warm-up suit printed with colorful drawings of Children of Many Lands. All he needed to complete the look was orange hair and a tomato nose. He had one of those ruggedly good-looking Anglo-Saxon outdoorsy faces, with supraorbital wrinkles like twin engravings of the Delicate Arch National Monument. Was he around fifty? Did he dye his bristles? He fixed me with an Ancient Mariner gaze and treated me to the firmest and driest of all old-boy handshakes, numbing out what was left of my carpal nerves. Shaking hands is always awkward for me anyway, and I rated my performance on this one at about four.

  “Real glad to meet you,” he said.

  [18]

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “I spent some time in one of your hospitals.”

  “Oh, yeah? Salt Lake Central?” he asked. I nodded. “That’s real gratifying to hear, Missus Warren and I are real proud o’ that one … and you’re feelin’ better now, I suppose?”

  “So they tell me,” I said.

  “Hey, what’s this cake about?” Marena asked.

  “It’s my birthday,” Lindsay said. “I’m fifty-darn-two.”

  “Full of grace,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Tuesday’s child,” I said. “Is, you know, full of grace. Sorry.”

  “Oh. No, no, you’re right,” he said. He smiled. “I was born on a Tuesday.”

  “You should see the other stuff he can do,” Marena said. “He’s like Rain Man.”

  Thanks a lot, I thought.

  “Without all the problems,” she backtracked.

  “Very interesting,” Lindsay said.

  “Would either of you like a slice?” Ashley1 asked. We said no, thanks.

  “How about some jasmine tea?”

  “Oh, thanks, uh, a coffee would be great,” I said.

  “Oh, sorry, no, there’s no coffee, there’s, there’s hot chocolate, I can do a Snelgrove’s Smoothie, or—”

  “Oh, okay, chocolate, sure, thanks,” I said. Jesu, I thought. So these people are such by-the-books Saints, there’s no caffeine up here anywhere.

  “Just give me a sec,” she sa
id. She left through the door we’d come through. Maybe it was the only door.

  “The gals had it all ready to celebrate,” Lindsay said. “But then things in the wide world … we weren’t feelin’ very festive.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Marena said. “No kidding. Still, congratulations anyway.”

  “Thanks.” He looked at me again. “All righty. What’s my Mayan horoscope?”

  “What day were you named on?” I asked.

  “The same day.”

  “So that’s 2 Jaguar, 2 Growing,” I said. “That’s a royal-type day, like a king would have. Only, that’s not exactly a horoscope. You’d have to ask for advice about a certain day.”

  “Well, good deal, then, what advice would you have for today?”

  “Well, today’s 3 Venus, 16 Growing. So for you it’s a very good time to start a project, or go on a trip, or anything like that.” I didn’t mention how the night of today was ruled by the Heart of the Mountains, and how that could also mean betrayal of, or by, another jaguar. It sounded like a downer.

  “Well, maybe we can start a project,” he said. He turned to the other three men, who’d sat back down. “Just gimme two shakes.”

  “Here you go,” Ashley1 enthused. She handed me a brimming mug of foamy sweetness. One side sported the Warren logo and the legend “Warren. Works for Me.™” I said thanks.

  “Y’ know, I looked over Larry’s report on that Mayan book,” Lindsay said. “And it was a real good report. But I didn’t quite get all those dates in it.”

  “What exactly about them?” Marena asked. She sat down, or rather she balanced on the back of a chair, with her feet on the seat. Boyle drifted toward the table but didn’t sit. Hatch and Snow just sat where they were, looking out of their depth. Orson, at least, seemed fascinated.

  “Just, why’d they pick out those dates and not others?” Lindsay asked. “There must have been a lot of dates that were just as wrong ’uns.” He looked straight at me. “Why didn’t it have 9/11, or Katrina, fr’instance?”

  It was something Taro and I had been over a hundred times. But for a nonspecialist it was a good question.

  “Well, they didn’t write it for us,” I said. “The book was probably commissioned by a single cat clan—”

  “Cat clan?”

  “Like a royal family.”

  “All righty.”

  “And they were probably only interested in what would happen to their descendants. Nine-eleven or Katrina didn’t affect many Maya Indians. That’s why—with the possible exception of the Orlando event—all the events in the book take place in or near the Maya area.”

  “Well, fair enough,” he said. He eased one haunch onto the edge of the table. As friendly as he was, there was a sort of relaxed rich-guy aura around him, like he wasn’t used to other people asking questions or choosing subjects of conversation. And he sure wasn’t asking me to sit down.

  “But then why do we think the last date, the one a year from now, why do you-all think that’s going to mess up everybody? Maybe the last date just means their last descendants’ll die off this year.”

  “That’s a clever thought,” Boyle brown-nosed.

  “Well, less because of the Codex and more because of other calculations,” I said. “And also, when I play through scenarios with the Game, it feels like there’s a real problem right around that date.”

  “So you think the whole world is way up a crick.”

  “Well … for what it’s worth I am beginning to think it’s very possible—or let’s say it’s probable. And of course, if it’s the end for everybody it’s the end for the Maya too—”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “Personally, I’m quite sure, but I can’t give many concrete reasons. Besides the Game records, I mean—”

  “So then we might be reading too much into it,” he said. “Right? Maybe there isn’t really a problem.”

  “Well … personally, I’m now convinced there’s a problem,” I said. “A week ago I hadn’t been. Playing through, I just don’t see a way around it. But it is hard to describe and you might have to learn to play the Game to really see it for yourself.” Damn, this guy’s not an idiot, I thought. Unlike your average Saint, he seemed to have a skeptical streak. Most of those guys were always expecting the End Times to start about five seconds from now. Well, maybe they were right this time. Even an anosmic hog finds a truffle once in a while. No wonder they built this place up in the hills. Imagine the thousands of square feet of bunkers they must have under here. Fifty years’ supply of freeze-dried meat loaf and sugar-free Tang. Just kill me now.

  “All righty, then, tell me, Jed, then, what’s it really feel like playin’ that Game thing?”

  “Well … when you start out it’s called rooting yourself, like you’re centering yourself on the world.” I was starting to feel not just terrified but also really, really uncomfortable. Whenever I talk about the Game it comes out sounding insufferably zhuzhy-wooshy-newy-agey. And I don’t know how to avoid it. “Then when you’re looking for a move you wait for what we call blood lightning, that’s a kind of fluttering feeling. A physical feeling.”

  “Where?”

  “It can be in any part of your body, usually it feels like it’s down near a bone … it’s not easy to put into words. But then when you act on that, and you move through the game board, it starts to feel like you’re traveling. You feel there are lots of paths ahead. Or in this case, you feel that past the end date, there are no paths.”

  “All righty, good enough,” Lindsay said. “Let’s move on. Suppose you folks do find out how to play the thing with—what is it, nine stones?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not even going to ask what that’s all about. Let’s just say you do find out how to play it, and then that still doesn’t help? What if it just says, yep, the world’s had it, and you can’t do anything about it?”

  Another tough one, I thought. Had he asked Sic these same questions? I wondered. Or different ones? I should have asked Marena before we came here. Idiot. I’d almost gotten a response together when he answered himself.

  “I s’pose then we won’t need to worry anyway,” he said. “Eh? We won’t have lost anything.”

  “Well, no,” I said. “But personally I don’t think—the thing is, the way to avert whatever it is ought to be contained in what it is.” Jed, that was totally incomprehensible, I thought. “Let me put that another way. The thing you have to understand is that they didn’t think of them as prophecies. They thought of them as advance reportage. They’re not supernatural events.”

  “All righty.”

  “And the ancient guys—they didn’t think in terms of progress. In fact, they thought of history as a process of decay. And to keep the world running as long as possible you had to do certain things. Like for example, with the Maya, even a historical event like a war was a holy act. And you had to do it at certain times and in certain ways, and you had to be purified first, and Lord knows what else. And maybe that was less silly than it sounds. Maybe by sacrificing this or that person—for instance—or by starting a forest fire or whatever, they were actually tweaking history.”

  “Well, fair enough,” he said. “But why’s it always a fire or a war or murders … y’know, everything that happens in that book is bad.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, I think the Game was designed to focus on the negative. It helps you identify trouble spots.”

  “That’s why the trading software version does best after crashes,” Boyle put in. “Or with short funds.”

  Lindsay smiled. “Well, that’s for sure the true bill,” he said to Boyle. He turned back to me. “Y’ know,” he said in a confidential voice, “you might have heard how back in 2009, after the housing crash, we were almost in Chapter Eleven?”

  “No, I hadn’t,” I said.

  “Well, we were. And we kept the coyotes off the herd by starting to base our actual trades on your friend Taro’s simulated trades. Back then it was only a half-point or so over our regular managers, but as of the first of this last year we were making nearly thirty-two percent per blessed annum.”

/>   “Wow,” I said. Who the hell cares? I thought. It’s The Last Days of Pompeii around here and you’re worried about your margin? That’s pretty cold. Although, come to think of it, an automatic 32 percent really is pretty—

  “But like Larry says, that software did its best work right before bull markets.”

  “It did well at predicting meltdowns,” Boyle said. “Almost every point of profit we made on Taro’s work was from shorting major funds before a crisis.”